“Living is a horizontal fall.”
Opium (1929)
Variant: Life is a horizontal fall.
Source: Opium: The Diary of His Cure
Jean Cocteau: Living
Jean Cocteau was French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker. Explore interesting quotes on living.
Jean Cocteau:
246
quotes
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likes
Diary of an Unknown (1988), On Invisibility
Context: Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility. In that case, you ask me, of what use is it? Of no use. Who will see it? No one. Which does not prevent it from being an outrage to modesty, though its exhibitionism is squandered on the blind. It is enough for poetry to express a personal ethic, which can then break away in the form of a work. It insists on living its own life. It becomes the pretext for a thousand misunderstandings that go by the name of glory...
"De la Ligne" in La Difficulté d’Etre [The Difficulty of Being] (1947)
Context: What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist’s presence makes itself felt above that of the model... With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul’s style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies.
"Du Rêve" in La Difficulté d’Etre [The Difficulty of Being] (1947)
“That pile of paper on his left side went on living like the watch on a dead soldier’s wrist.”
On his visit to the deathbed of Marcel Proust, as quoted in "Cocteau: The Great Enchanter" by Edmund White Vogue (May 1984)
Opium (1929)
“One is either judge or accused. The judge sits, the accused stands. Live on your feet.”
Diary of an Unknown (1988)