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The artist is a kind of prison from which the works of art escape.

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
Artist
Art
Kind
Escape
Prison
Works

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Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing.
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Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
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I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
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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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In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor nobody is content to be a spectator.
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One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
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French people are Italian people in a bad mood.
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The art of genius is knowing how far out is too far.
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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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Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.
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The artist must know how far to go too far.
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Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time.
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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 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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Poetry is a religion without hope, but its martyrs guarantee the eternal truth of its dogma.
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The joy of the young is to disobey
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Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for.
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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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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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