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An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
Jean Cocteau
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Jean Cocteau
Age: 74 †
Born: 1889
Born: July 5
Died: 1963
Died: October 11
Actor
Composer
Designer
Film Director
Illustrator
Librettist
Novelist
Painter
Photographer
Playwright
Poet
Postage Stamp Designer
Prosaist
Clément Eugène Jean Pierre Cocteau
Zhan Kokto
Eugène Jean Maurice Cocteau
Eugene Jean Maurice Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Horticulture
Discuss
Plant
Speak
Artist
Art
Cannot
More quotes by Jean Cocteau
I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.
Jean Cocteau
The art of genius is knowing how far out is too far.
Jean Cocteau
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.
Jean Cocteau
Understand that some of your enemies are amongst your best friends.
Jean Cocteau
The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
Jean Cocteau
The runner stopped dead, lost his balance, froze in one of those violent attitudes in which the photographers petrify living reality.
Jean Cocteau
May the devil himself splatter you with dung.
Jean Cocteau
The poet is at the disposal of the night. His role is humble, he must clean house and await its due visitation.
Jean Cocteau
Appreciation of art is a moral erection, otherwise mere dilettantism.
Jean Cocteau
Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
Jean Cocteau
The cinema is death at work.
Jean Cocteau
One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.
Jean Cocteau
Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.
Jean Cocteau
The poet never asks for admiration he wants to be believed.
Jean Cocteau
The audience bursts into laughter. With the tragic gag I don't expect the audience to laugh (if they do, I have failed) but I expect a black silence from them that is almost as violent: as laughter.
Jean Cocteau
At all costs the true world of childhood must prevail, must be restored that world whose momentous, heroic, mysterious quality is fed on airy nothings, whose substance is so ill-fitted to withstand the brutal touch of adult inquisition.
Jean Cocteau
After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
Jean Cocteau
Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.
Jean Cocteau
The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source.
Jean Cocteau
The ultimate politeness in art consists of speaking only to those who are able to uncover and measure its relationships. Anything else is symbolic, and symbolism is merely transcendental imagery.
Jean Cocteau
