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Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo

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
Hugo
Madman
Victor
Madmen
Thought

More quotes by 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.
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The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
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One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
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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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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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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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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 course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source.
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The poet Paul Éluard says that to understand my film version of Beauty and the Beast, you must love your dog more than your car.
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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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Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
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Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time.
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I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.
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It seems to me that invisibility is the required provision of elegance. Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.
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A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility.
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The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
Jean Cocteau
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A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
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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
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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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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.
Jean Cocteau