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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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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
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Originality
Imitation
Unable
Copies
Originals
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Artist

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A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility.
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Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
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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.
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Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
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Poetry is a religion without hope. The poet exhausts himself in its service, knowing that, in the long run, a masterpiece is nothing but the performance of a trained dog on very shaky ground.
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A man's truest self realizations might require him, above all, to learn to close his eyes: to let himself be taken unawares, to follow his dark angel, to risk his illegal instincts.
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The runner stopped dead, lost his balance, froze in one of those violent attitudes in which the photographers petrify living reality.
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Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
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I succeeded in bewitching a fair number and in being intoxicated with my mistakes.
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The skin of all of us is responsive to gypsy songs and military marches.
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Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
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Look out! Be on your guard, because alone of all the arts, music moves all around you.
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Art is science made flesh.
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Watch yourself all your life in a mirror and you'll see Death at work like bees in a glass hive.
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How our old friend [Michelangelo] of the Sistine would have loved to photograph his workers, perched on the fragile planks. Dali was right to say Leonardo only worked from photographs.
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The only work of art which succeeds is that which fails.
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I have never felt any connection with my family. There is—I must say simply—something in me that is not in my family. That was not visible in my father or mother. I do not know its origin.
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Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.
Jean Cocteau
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Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
Jean Cocteau
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Never do what a specialist can do better. Discover your own specialty. Do not despair if your specialty appears to be more delicate, a lesser thing. Make up in finesse what you lose in force.
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