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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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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
Silence
Almost
Bursts
Audience
Tragic
Black
Failed
Violent
Laughter
Laugh
Expect
More quotes by Jean Cocteau
Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative.
Jean Cocteau
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
Lack of manners is the sign of a hero.
Jean Cocteau
The Louvre is a morgue you go there to identify your friends.
Jean Cocteau
Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
Jean Cocteau
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
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
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
Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time.
Jean Cocteau
An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
Jean Cocteau
History is a combination of reality and lies. The reality of History becomes a lie. The unreality of the fable becomes the truth.
Jean Cocteau
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
Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
Jean Cocteau
The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.
Jean Cocteau
Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.
Jean Cocteau
Poetry is a religion without hope. The poet exhausts himself in its service, knowing that, in the long run, a masterpiece is nothing but the performance of a trained dog on very shaky ground.
Jean Cocteau
Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.
Jean Cocteau
Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
Jean Cocteau
He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child, a lazy activeness, a mad wisdom, a solitude encompassing the world.
Jean Cocteau
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
Jean Cocteau