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Jean Cocteau Biography

Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau (French: [ʒɑ̃ kɔkto]; 5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French writer, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Cocteau is best known for his novel Les Enfants Terribles (1929), and the films The Blood of a Poet (1930), Les Parents Terribles (1948), Beauty and the Beast (1946) and Orpheus (1949). His circle of associates, friends included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Gertrude Stein, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Yul Brynner, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, Albert Gleizes, Igor Stravinsky, Marie Laurencin, María Félix, Édith Piaf, Panama Al Brown, Colette, Jean Genet, and Raymond Radiguet.

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Jean Cocteau Quotes

Mirrors would do well to reflect a little more before sending back images.

Back, Images, Littles, Mirrors, Sending, Wells

Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally.

Beautiful, Beautiful Women, Figures, See, Speaking, Woman

Vivre est une chute horizontale. Life is a horizontal fall.

Chute, Fall, Horizontal, Life, Life Is, Une

After you have written a thing and you reread it, there is always the temptation to fix it up, to improve it, to remove its poison, blunt its sting.

Fix, Improve, Poison, Temptation, Thing, Writing

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.

Happiness, Hate, Love, Men, Scandalous, Simple

Poetry is a religion without hope, but its martyrs guarantee the eternal truth of its dogma.

Dogma, Eternal, Guarantees, Martyr, Martyrs, Poetry

We are in a period of such individualism that one no longer speaks of disciples; one speaks of thieves.

Disciples, Individualism, Speak, Speaks, Thieves

The poet is at the disposal of the night. His role is humble, he must clean house and await its due visitation.

Due, House, Humble, Night

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.

Criticism, Criticize, Criticizes, Critics, Cultivate, Public

One sits down first; one thinks afterwards.

Down, Firsts, Sits, Thinking, Thinks, Time

Without opium, plans, marriages and journeys appear to me just as foolish as if someone falling out of a window were to hope to make friends with the occupants of the room before which he passes.

Fall, Journey, Make, Room, Rooms, Window

All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.

Feelings, Good, Music, Mysterious, Resembles

It seems to me that invisibility is the required provision of elegance. Elegance ceases to exist when it is noticed.

Ceases, Elegance, Exist, Invisibility, Provision, Required

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.

Adults, Childhood, Inquisition, Nothings, Quality

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

Invent, Invention, Listens, Poet, Poetic, Poetry

A child's reaction to this type of calamity is twofold and extreme. Not knowing how deeply, powerfully, life drops anchor into its vast sources of recuperation, he is bound to envisage, at once, the very worst; yet at the same time, because of his inability to imagine death, the worst remains totally unreal to him. Gerard went on repeating: "Paul's dying; Paul's going to die"' but he did not believe it. Paul's death would be part of the dream, a dream of snow, of journeying forever.

Believe, Children, Dream, Dying, Extreme, Recuperation

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.

Dream, Regret, Cutting, Friends, Cut, Surprises

People seek escape in myth by any means at their disposal, including drugs, alcohol, meditation, and lies.

Lying, Mean, Myth, People, Seek

When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.

Time, Funny Basketball, Originality, Work, Ahead

Respect movements, flee schools.

Flee, Movement, Movements, Respect, School, Schools

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