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 COCTEAUThe 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.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
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Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
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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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Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
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Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work – that’s what makes you unique.
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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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Living is a horizontal fall.
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When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
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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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The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.
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Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.
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Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.
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The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.
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What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
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A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
JEAN COCTEAU