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Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.

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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Effect
Freshness
Light
Clean
Corny
Take
Poet
Spontaneity
Done
Effects
Originally
Youth
Commonplace
Produce
Polish
Rest
Originality
Literature
Produces

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
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My only politics have been friendship.
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I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
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The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
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The hot hall full of painted girls and American soldiers is a saloon in some Western film. This noise drenches us, wakens us to do something else. It shows us a lost path.
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Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.
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I am burning myself up and will always do so.
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You are always concentrated on the inner thing. The moment one becomes aware of the crowd, performs for the crowd, it is spectacle.
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Since it's now fashionable to laugh at the conservative French Academy, I have remained a rebel by joining it.
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The art of genius is knowing how far out is too far.
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Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
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The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
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True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.
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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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Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
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To be audacious with tact, you have to know to what point you can go too far.
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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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There's no such thing as love only proof of love.
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Alas! I do not believe that inspiration falls from heaven. think it rather the result of a profound indolence.
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The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
Jean Cocteau