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Childhood knows what it wants - to leave childhood behind.

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
Leave
Wants
Childhood
Behinds
Behind

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The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.
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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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The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by the source.
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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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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.
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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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The speed of a runaway horse counts for nothing.
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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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The hot hall full of painted girls and American soldiers is a saloon in some Western film. This noise drenches us, wakens us to do something else. It shows us a lost path.
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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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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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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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Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
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Watch yourself all your life in a mirror and you'll see Death at work like bees in a glass hive.
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Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known.
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Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.
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Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
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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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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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