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Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative.

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
Mean
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Falsification
Men
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Conducted
Ethics
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According
Imperative
Discipline
Constructed
Behavior
Ethic
Poetry
Imperatives
Secret
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Categorical

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He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child, a lazy activeness, a mad wisdom, a solitude encompassing the world.
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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.
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The joy of the young is to disobey
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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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The art of genius is knowing how far out is too far.
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Childhood knows what it wants - to leave childhood behind.
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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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The Louvre is a morgue you go there to identify your friends.
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An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
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Since it's now fashionable to laugh at the conservative French Academy, I have remained a rebel by joining it.
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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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True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.
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Celebrity: I picture myself as a marble bust with legs to run everywhere.
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An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture.
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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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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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The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source.
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There's no such thing as love only proof of love.
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The poet never asks for admiration he wants to be believed.
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