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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.

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
Profound
Witnessed
Result
Potentially
Inspiration
Arrived
Results
Seat
Start
Awesome
Three
Seats
Play
Acts
Awoke
Theatre
Indolence

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
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My only politics have been friendship.
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Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility... It insists on living its own life.
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The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.
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The joy of the young is to disobey
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Alas! I do not believe that inspiration falls from heaven. think it rather the result of a profound indolence.
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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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The ability to laugh heartily is the sign of a healthy soul.
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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.
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The art of genius is knowing how far out is too far.
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I love cats because I enjoy my home and little by little, they become its visible soul.
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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.
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The runner stopped dead, lost his balance, froze in one of those violent attitudes in which the photographers petrify living reality.
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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.
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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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The poet is at the disposal of the night. His role is humble, he must clean house and await its due visitation.
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Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble.
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Perhaps I know to what extent I can go too far.
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Celebrity: I picture myself as a marble bust with legs to run everywhere.
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The joy of youth is to disobey but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders.
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