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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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Jean Cocteau
Age: 74 †
Born: 1889
Born: July 5
Died: 1963
Died: October 11
Actor
Composer
Designer
Film Director
Illustrator
Librettist
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Painter
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Playwright
Poet
Postage Stamp Designer
Prosaist
Clément Eugène Jean Pierre Cocteau
Zhan Kokto
Eugène Jean Maurice Cocteau
Eugene Jean Maurice Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Keeps
Habit
Seeing
Prevents
True
Realism
Reality
Revealing
Things
Surprising
Consists
Covered
More quotes by Jean Cocteau
I love cats because I enjoy my home and little by little, they become its visible soul.
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In exiling myself I am not exiling a monster, but a man whom society will not allow to live, since it considers one of the mysterious cogs in God's masterpiece to be a mistake.
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Without opium, plans, marriages and journeys appear to me just as foolish as if someone falling out of a window were to hope to make friends with the occupants of the room before which he passes.
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
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
Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility... It insists on living its own life.
Jean Cocteau
The poet never asks for admiration he wants to be believed.
Jean Cocteau
Lack of manners is the sign of a hero.
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A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility.
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Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.
Jean Cocteau
One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
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History is a combination of reality and lies. The reality of History becomes a lie. The unreality of the fable becomes the truth.
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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.
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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.
Jean Cocteau
Cultivate everything the critics hated in your first work - that's what makes you unique.
Jean Cocteau
I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
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
It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
Jean Cocteau
You are always concentrated on the inner thing. The moment one becomes aware of the crowd, performs for the crowd, it is spectacle.
Jean Cocteau
Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
Jean Cocteau
