The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
JEAN COCTEAUThe reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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Poetry is a religion without hope. The poet exhausts himself in its service, knowing that, in the long run, a masterpiece is nothing but the performance of a trained dog on very shaky ground.
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Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
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Living is a horizontal fall.
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The job of the poet (a job which can’t be learned) consists of placing those objects of the visible world which have become invisible due to the glue of habit, in an unusual position which strikes the soul and gives them a tragic force.
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I feel myself inhabited by a force or being — very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.
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Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
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The poet, by composing poems, uses a language that is neither dead nor living, that few people speak, and few people understand We are the servants of an unknown force that lives within us, manipulates us, and dictates this language to us.
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Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.
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Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
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After you have written a thing and you reread it, there is always the temptation to fix it up, to improve it, to remove its poison, blunt its sting.
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Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
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There’s no such thing as love; only proof of love.
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Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
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The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.
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All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
JEAN COCTEAU