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Art
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Art is science made clear.
-Jean Cocteau
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One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.
-Jean Cocteau
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Automobiles
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A car can massage organs which no masseur can reach. It is the one remedy for the disorders of the great sympathetic nervous system.
-Jean Cocteau
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Books
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The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
-Jean Cocteau
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Cats
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I love my cats because I love my home, and little by little they become its visible soul.
-Jean Cocteau
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Criticism
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What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.
-Jean Cocteau
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Death
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I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.
-Jean Cocteau
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Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
-Jean Cocteau
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Deception/Lying
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I am a lie who always speaks the truth.
-Jean Cocteau
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Dreams
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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.
-Jean Cocteau
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Drugs
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Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death.
-Jean Cocteau
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Escape, Escapism
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Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.
-Jean Cocteau
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Fashion
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Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.
-Jean Cocteau, "New York World-Telegram & Sun", August 21, 1960
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Film / Filmmaking / Movies
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A film is a petrified fountain of thought.
-Jean Cocteau
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Habits
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True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.
-Jean Cocteau
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Imitation
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An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
-Jean Cocteau
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Innovation
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When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work.
-Jean Cocteau
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Life
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Life is a horizontal fall.
-Jean Cocteau
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The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizarre which seems inherent in them.
-Jean Cocteau
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Luck
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We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?
-Jean Cocteau
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Men
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There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard.
-Jean Cocteau
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Museums, Galleries
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The Louver is a morgue; you go there to identify your friends.
-Jean Cocteau
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Music
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All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
-Jean Cocteau
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Mystery
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Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what's known as infinity.
-Jean Cocteau
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Obedience
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The joy of youth is to disobey; but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders.
-Jean Cocteau
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Books by and about Jean Cocteau