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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
Cannot
Horticulture
Discuss
Plant
Speak
Artist
Art

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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Keep braiding one's wavelengths back into oneself. That way they gain all the more external power and surround us with a huge affective and protective zone. Don't talk about this. Never talk about our secret methods. If we talk about them, they stop working.
Jean Cocteau
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Alas! I do not believe that inspiration falls from heaven. think it rather the result of a profound indolence.
Jean Cocteau
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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
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What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show.
Jean Cocteau
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True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.
Jean Cocteau
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To be audacious with tact, you have to know to what point you can go too far.
Jean Cocteau
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An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
Jean Cocteau
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The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
Jean Cocteau
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I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
Jean Cocteau
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The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.
Jean Cocteau
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What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show. Jacques felt himself growing gloomy again. He was well aware that to live on earth a man must follow its fashions, and hearts were no longer worn.
Jean Cocteau
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Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
Jean Cocteau
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After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
Jean Cocteau
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What is style? For many people, a very complicated way of saying very simple things. According to us, a very simple way of saying very complicated things.
Jean Cocteau
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Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative.
Jean Cocteau
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Poetry is a religion without hope, but its martyrs guarantee the eternal truth of its dogma.
Jean Cocteau
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I love cats because I enjoy my home and little by little, they become its visible soul.
Jean Cocteau
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Such 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.
Jean Cocteau
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The poet is at the disposal of the night. His role is humble, he must clean house and await its due visitation.
Jean Cocteau