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I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.

Jean Cocteau

I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
JEAN COCTEAU

Animal Cat Enjoyment Home Love Myself Soul Visible
The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
JEAN COCTEAU

Artist Escape Kind Prison Work
Silence moves faster when it’s going backward.
JEAN COCTEAU

Fast Move One Liner Philosophy Silence
The extreme limit of wisdom, that’s what the public calls madness.
JEAN COCTEAU

Call Limitation Public Wisdom
You’ve never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.
JEAN COCTEAU

Death Mirror See Yourself
Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don’t like – then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping.
JEAN COCTEAU

Care Criticism Listening Work Yourself
One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.
JEAN COCTEAU

Character Dreams Friendship Habit Live Regret Stranger Surprise
Everything 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.
JEAN COCTEAU

Death Expression Life Love Oneself Training
We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?
JEAN COCTEAU

Believe Explanation Luck
I’ve always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.
JEAN COCTEAU

Deep Difference History Illusion Myth Mythology Perspective Reality Truth
Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
JEAN COCTEAU

Action Appearance Youth
Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
JEAN COCTEAU

Myself Mystery Organization Pretend
Picasso said that everything is a miracle, that it’s a miracle that we don’t dissolve in our baths.
JEAN COCTEAU

Funny Magic Miracle Ourselves Water
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 COCTEAU

Art Artist Bad Fame Give Up Reward Success
Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
JEAN COCTEAU

Complication Simplicity Style Way
Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.
JEAN COCTEAU

Art Lying Preference Reality

I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.

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I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.

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