#me

Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail. ↗

— Jean Cocteau

#emotion #obtained #only #resulting #sentimental

I just wrote what I felt like writing since they seemed to sell. ↗

— Jack Vance

#i #just #like #seemed #sell

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

— Jean Cocteau

#death #here #how #i #i am

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

#best #friends #friendship #god #had

The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying. ↗

— Jean Cocteau

#birth #day #death #hurrying #me

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

— Jean Cocteau

#appears #behind #only #time #work

Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs. ↗

— Jean Cocteau

#backward #commissions #dared #down #fall

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

— Jean Cocteau

#comfort #ecstasy #height #hermit #his

I never did buy things on credit, I always paid for 'em, because I can't see much difference in paying for something and just waiting a week and pay interest on it; that looks foolish to me. ↗

— Howard Finster

#because #buy #credit #did #difference

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

#commonplace #did #done #effect #freshness