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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
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
Habit
Seeing
Prevents
True
Realism
Reality
Revealing
Things
Surprising
Consists
Covered
Keeps

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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Inspiration arrived as a result of profound indolence... I awoke with a start and witnessed as from a seat in a theatre, three acts of a potentially awesome play.
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Childhood knows what it wants - to leave childhood behind.
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Art is science made flesh.
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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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Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail.
Jean Cocteau
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The preservation of friendship is seen as opportunism. You are required to be in one camp or the other. You are enjoined to cut your heartstrings if they extend across the barricade.
Jean Cocteau
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The world owes its enchantment to these curious creatures and their fancies but its multiple complicity rejects them. Thistledown spirits, tragic, heartrending in their evanescence, they must go blowing headlong to perdition.
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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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My little Renoirs. Matisse describes having seen Renoir make these tiny canvases. When he had finished working, he would use up the color left in his brushes on them.
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Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
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I succeeded in bewitching a fair number and in being intoxicated with my mistakes.
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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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We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples one speaks of thieves.
Jean Cocteau
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Enough of clouds, waves, aquariums, water-sprites and nocturnal scents what we need is music of the earth, everyday music..music one can live in like a house.
Jean Cocteau
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The artist must know how far to go too far.
Jean Cocteau
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See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan's deflation is another's inflation.
Jean Cocteau
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Celebrity: I picture myself as a marble bust with legs to run everywhere.
Jean Cocteau
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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
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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.
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The joy of youth is to disobey but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders.
Jean Cocteau