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Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.
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
Knew
Art
Indispensable
Poetry
More quotes by Jean Cocteau
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
Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature.
Jean Cocteau
Understand that some of your enemies are amongst your best friends.
Jean Cocteau
Art is science made flesh.
Jean Cocteau
See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan's deflation is another's inflation.
Jean Cocteau
Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
Jean Cocteau
The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
Jean Cocteau
Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities.
Jean Cocteau
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
Jean Cocteau
Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.
Jean Cocteau
Poetry is a religion without hope, but its martyrs guarantee the eternal truth of its dogma.
Jean Cocteau
The runner stopped dead, lost his balance, froze in one of those violent attitudes in which the photographers petrify living reality.
Jean Cocteau
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
Jean Cocteau
The cinema is death at work.
Jean Cocteau
Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time.
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
There's no such thing as love only proof of love.
Jean Cocteau
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
The ultimate politeness in art consists of speaking only to those who are able to uncover and measure its relationships. Anything else is symbolic, and symbolism is merely transcendental imagery.
Jean Cocteau
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
