The only way to kill death is through photography.
JEAN COCTEAUWhen I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don’t. I have a knack for disturbing.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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My method is simple: not to bother about poetry. It must come of its own accord. Merely whispering its name drives it away.
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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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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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Love is mainly an affair of short spasms. If these spasms disappoint us, love dies. It is very seldom that it weathers the experience and becomes friendship.
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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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Silence moves faster when it’s going backward.
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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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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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A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
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Poetry is a religion with no hope.
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After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
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Lying is the only art form that the public sanctions and instinctively prefers to reality.
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May the devil himself splatter you with dung.
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Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
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Whatever the world condemns you for, make it your own. It is yourself.
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Art is science in the flesh.
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There’s no such thing as love; only proof of love.
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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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The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.
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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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Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
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Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what’s known as infinity.
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The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up.
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Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly.
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An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
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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.
JEAN COCTEAU