I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
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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We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?
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If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.
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Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
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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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Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
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The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.
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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.
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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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After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
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An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
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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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All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
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One must not mistake majority for truth.
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Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work – that’s what makes you unique.
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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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