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I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.

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
Indispensable
Poetry

More quotes by Jean Cocteau

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What is style? For many people, a very complicated way of saying very simple things. According to us, a very simple way of saying very complicated things.
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The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
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And now I have to confess the unpardonable and the scandalous. I am a happy man. And I am going to tell you the secret of my happiness. It is quite simple. I love mankind. I love love. I hate hate. I try to understand and accept.
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Poetry is a religion without hope, but its martyrs guarantee the eternal truth of its dogma.
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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.
Jean Cocteau
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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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Every day in the mirror I watch death at work.
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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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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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In exiling myself I am not exiling a monster, but a man whom society will not allow to live, since it considers one of the mysterious cogs in God's masterpiece to be a mistake.
Jean Cocteau
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A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
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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
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The prettiest dresses are worn to be taken off.
Jean Cocteau
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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.
Jean Cocteau
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Youth is certain what it rejects before it knows what it will accept.
Jean Cocteau
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French people are Italian people in a bad mood.
Jean Cocteau
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The joy of the young is to disobey
Jean Cocteau
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Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
Jean Cocteau
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May the devil himself splatter you with dung.
Jean Cocteau