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

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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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The ultimate politeness in art consists of speaking only to those who are able to uncover and measure its relationships. Anything else is symbolic, and symbolism is merely transcendental imagery.
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The poet is at the disposal of the night. His role is humble, he must clean house and await its due visitation.
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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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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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After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
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One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.
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An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
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Understand that some of your enemies are amongst your best friends.
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Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility... It insists on living its own life.
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French people are Italian people in a bad mood.
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Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
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Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.
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Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
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See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan's deflation is another's inflation.
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May the devil himself splatter you with dung.
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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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I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
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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 poet never asks for admiration he wants to be believed.
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