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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
Posthumous
Living
Artist
Art
Must
Men

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Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.
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Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.
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Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
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After the writer's death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter.
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The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
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Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!
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See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan's deflation is another's inflation.
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The artist must know how far to go too far.
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You have comfort. You don't have luxury. And don't tell me that money plays a part. The luxury I advocate has nothing to do with money. It cannot be bought. It is the reward of those who have NO Fear or Discomfort.
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Childhood knows what it wants - to leave childhood behind.
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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.
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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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Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.
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It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.
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The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source.
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I am burning myself up and will always do so.
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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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The only work of art which succeeds is that which fails.
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I succeeded in bewitching a fair number and in being intoxicated with my mistakes.
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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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