The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
JEAN COCTEAUListen 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.
More Jean Cocteau Quotes
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May the devil himself splatter you with dung.
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Poetry is indispensable – if I only knew what for.
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Since these mysteries exceed my grasp, I shall pretend to have organized them.
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Silence moves faster when it’s going backward.
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Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
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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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The eyes of the dead are closed gently; we also have to open gently the eyes of the living.
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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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I’ve always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.
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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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I feel myself inhabited by a force or being — very little known to me. It gives the orders; I follow.
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I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.
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The only way to kill death is through photography.
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One must not mistake majority for truth.
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Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
JEAN COCTEAU