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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
Unknown
Appearance
Toward
Creation
Spirit
Reality
Appearances
Writing
Breakthrough
Contradiction

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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Poetry is a religion without hope, but its martyrs guarantee the eternal truth of its dogma.
Jean Cocteau
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The public is never pleased with what we do, wanting always a copy of what we have done.
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The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source.
Jean Cocteau
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Enough of clouds, waves, aquariums, water-sprites and nocturnal scents what we need is music of the earth, everyday music..music one can live in like a house.
Jean Cocteau
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One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
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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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.
Jean Cocteau
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Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
Jean Cocteau
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Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
Jean Cocteau
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The public only takes up yesterday as a stick to beat today.
Jean Cocteau
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The poet doesn't invent. He listens.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
Jean Cocteau
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The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world.
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.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
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.
Jean Cocteau
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Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.
Jean Cocteau