Famous Quotes,
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Jean Cocteau

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Jean Cocteau

Born: July 5, 1889

Died: October 11, 1963

Nationality: French

Occupation: Director, novelist, poet, artist, filmmaker

Biography: Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. Cocteau is best known for his novel Les Enfants terribles, and the films Blood of a Poet, Les Parents terribles, Beauty and the Beast, and Orpheus.

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Jean Cocteau

“Film will only became an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper.”

- Jean Cocteau

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Jean Cocteau

“Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.”

- Jean Cocteau

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Jean Cocteau

“I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?”

- Jean Cocteau

Source/Notes: In French: "Je crois en la chance: c'est la seule explication pour le succès des gens qui nous sont antipathiques." - Jean Cocteau: l'insolence (ALiAS, 2003) by Brigitte Arnaud, p. 30

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Jean Cocteau

“I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.”

- Jean Cocteau

Source/Notes: Visite in Discours du Grand Sommeil (1920); later published in Collected Works Vol. 4 (1947)

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Jean Cocteau

“I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another.”

- Jean Cocteau

Source/Notes: Vogue (May 1984)

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Jean Cocteau

“I love cats because I enjoy my home; and little by little, they become its visible soul.”

- Jean Cocteau

Source/Notes: In French: "J'aime les/mes chats parce que j'aime ma maison et qu'ils en deviennent peu à peu l'âme visible." - La revue des deux mondes, Issues 5-8 (1951), p. 568

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Jean Cocteau

“If a hermit lives in a state of ecstasy, his lack of comfort becomes the height of comfort. He must relinquish it.”

- Jean Cocteau

Source/Notes: Opium (1929)

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Jean Cocteau

“If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas.”

- Jean Cocteau

Source/Notes: Le Coq et l'Arlequin (1918)

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Jean Cocteau

“In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.”

- Jean Cocteau

Source/Notes: Le Coq et l'Arlequin (1918)

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Jean Cocteau

“It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.”

- Jean Cocteau

Source/Notes: Opium (1929)

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Jean Cocteau

“Life is a horizontal fall.”

- Jean Cocteau

Source/Notes: Opium (1929)

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Jean Cocteau

“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

Source/Notes: On Invisibility in Diary of an Unknown (1953)

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Jean Cocteau

“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

Source/Notes: Anubis in Act 2 of The Infernal Machine (1932); Collected Works Vol. 5 (1948).

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Jean Cocteau

“One must be a living man and a posthumous artist.”

- Jean Cocteau

Source/Notes: Le Coq et l'Arlequin (1918)

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