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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
Creation
Spirit
Reality
Appearances
Writing
Breakthrough
Contradiction
Unknown
Appearance
Toward

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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I feel myself inhabited by a force or being -- very little known to me. It gives the orders I follow.
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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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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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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.
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Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.
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The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.
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The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
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Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.
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After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
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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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All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
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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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May the devil himself splatter you with dung.
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Without opium, plans, marriages and journeys appear to me just as foolish as if someone falling out of a window were to hope to make friends with the occupants of the room before which he passes.
Jean Cocteau
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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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Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
Jean Cocteau
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The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
Jean Cocteau
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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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one should always talk well about oneself! The word spreads around and in the end, noone remembers where it started
Jean Cocteau
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One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
Jean Cocteau