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The spirit of creation is the spirit of contradiction. It is the breakthrough of appearances toward an unknown reality.

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
Toward
Creation
Spirit
Reality
Appearances
Writing
Breakthrough
Contradiction
Unknown
Appearance

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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And history becomes legend and legend becomes history.
Jean Cocteau
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Keep braiding one's wavelengths back into oneself. That way they gain all the more external power and surround us with a huge affective and protective zone. Don't talk about this. Never talk about our secret methods. If we talk about them, they stop working.
Jean Cocteau
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The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
Jean Cocteau
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Art is science made flesh.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
Jean Cocteau
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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
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The cinema is death at work.
Jean Cocteau
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An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
Jean Cocteau
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In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor nobody is content to be a spectator.
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.
Jean Cocteau
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An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
Jean Cocteau
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I have never felt any connection with my family. There is—I must say simply—something in me that is not in my family. That was not visible in my father or mother. I do not know its origin.
Jean Cocteau
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The poet never asks for admiration he wants to be believed.
Jean Cocteau
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The runner stopped dead, lost his balance, froze in one of those violent attitudes in which the photographers petrify living reality.
Jean Cocteau
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The artist must know how far to go too far.
Jean Cocteau
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My only politics have been friendship.
Jean Cocteau
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And now I have to confess the unpardonable and the scandalous. I am a happy man. And I am going to tell you the secret of my happiness. It is quite simple. I love mankind. I love love. I hate hate. I try to understand and accept.
Jean Cocteau
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The public is never pleased with what we do, wanting always a copy of what we have done.
Jean Cocteau