When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
JEAN COCTEAUEverything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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You have comfort. You don’t have luxury. And don’t tell me that money plays a part. The luxury I advocate has nothing to do with money. It cannot be bought. It is the reward of those who have NO Fear or Discomfort.
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It is difficult to live without opium after having known it because it is difficult, after knowing opium, to take earth seriously. And unless one is a saint, it is difficult to live without taking earth seriously.
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The only way to kill death is through photography.
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Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.
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The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
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Picasso said that everything is a miracle, that it’s a miracle that we don’t dissolve in our baths.
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The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.
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Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
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Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
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French people are Italian people in a bad mood.
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Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
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Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
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Silence moves faster when it’s going backward.
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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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All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
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