Style is a simple way of saying complicated things. Jean Cocteau More Quotes by Jean Cocteau More Quotes From Jean Cocteau What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you. Jean Cocteau criticize critics criticism 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. Jean Cocteau car dog love-you Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly. Jean Cocteau mind may attitude 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. Jean Cocteau finesse despair over-you The poet doesn't invent. He listens. Jean Cocteau poetic invention poetry I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead. Jean Cocteau news dying death Whatever the public blames you for, cultivate it; it is yourself. Jean Cocteau lgbt blame gay I've always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality. Jean Cocteau mythology illusion reality Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live. Jean Cocteau recovery teaching here-i-am Youth can only assert itself through the conviction that its ventures surpass all others and resemble nothing. Jean Cocteau venture conviction youth Picasso said that everything is a miracle, that it's a miracle that we don't dissolve in our baths. Jean Cocteau baths miracle said 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. Jean Cocteau roles poetry light 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 childhood quality adults Respect movements, flee schools. Jean Cocteau movement school In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator. Jean Cocteau paris actors want Silence moves faster when it's going backward. Jean Cocteau faster silence moving When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don't. I have a knack for disturbing. Jean Cocteau knack painting writing I'm not willing just to be tolerated. That wounds my love of love and of liberty. Jean Cocteau wounds willing liberty When we awake it is the animal, the plant, that thinks in us. Primitive thought without the least disguise. We see a terrible universe, because we see clearly. A little later, intelligence introduces its impeding contrivances. It brings the little toys which man invents in order to hide the void. It is then that we think we are seeing clearly. We attribute our uneasiness to the miasmas of the brain as it passes from dream to reality. Jean Cocteau dream animal reality Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature. Jean Cocteau light done jobs
