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One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.

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
Artist
Art
Must
Men
Posthumous
Living

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And history becomes legend and legend becomes history.
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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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Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
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Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.
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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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To be audacious with tact, you have to know to what point you can go too far.
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Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
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What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show.
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The poet doesn't invent. He listens.
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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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Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.
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Inspiration arrived as a result of profound indolence... I awoke with a start and witnessed as from a seat in a theatre, three acts of a potentially awesome play.
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Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.
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Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
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Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
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The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.
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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.
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Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.
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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.
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Alas! I do not believe that inspiration falls from heaven. think it rather the result of a profound indolence.
Jean Cocteau