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.
JEAN COCTEAUSuch is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.
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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Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
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I have not looked at a newspaper in twenty years; if one is brought into the room, I flee. This is not because I am indifferent but because one cannot follow every road.
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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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We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.
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Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.
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A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
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One must not mistake majority for truth.
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A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
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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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Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
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Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
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Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
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After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
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Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.
JEAN COCTEAU