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After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.

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
Letter
Receiving
Letters
Writer
Reading
Death
Long
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Journal

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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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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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.
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Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
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He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child, a lazy activeness, a mad wisdom, a solitude encompassing the world.
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The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.
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.
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I succeeded in bewitching a fair number and in being intoxicated with my mistakes.
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In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor nobody is content to be a spectator.
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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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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.
Jean Cocteau
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The only work of art which succeeds is that which fails.
Jean Cocteau
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It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
Jean Cocteau
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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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Celebrity: I picture myself as a marble bust with legs to run everywhere.
Jean Cocteau
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Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.
Jean Cocteau
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The public only takes up yesterday as a stick to beat today.
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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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The Louvre is a morgue you go there to identify your friends.
Jean Cocteau
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One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
Jean Cocteau
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An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
Jean Cocteau