An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
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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A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
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Nothing ever gets anywhere. The earth keeps turning round and gets nowhere. The moment is the only thing that counts.
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The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
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Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.
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Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
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Living is a horizontal fall.
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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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Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
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What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
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Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility… It insists on living its own life.
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Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.
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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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The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
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Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
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Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
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