“What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart?
It is too heavy. It will always show.
Jacques felt himself growing gloomy again. He was well aware that to live on earth a man must follow its fashions, and hearts were no longer worn.”
― Jean Cocteau, quote from The Holy Terrors
“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, quote from The Holy Terrors
“What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show.”
― Jean Cocteau, quote from The Holy Terrors
“The world owes its enchantment to these curious creatures and their fancies; but its multiple complicity rejects them. Thistledown spirits, tragic, heartrending in their evanescence, they must go blowing headlong to perdition.”
― Jean Cocteau, quote from The Holy Terrors
Jean Cocteau
Born place: in Maisons-Laffitte, France
Born date July 5, 1889
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“Everybody was sorry. Sorry was easy. Sorry was for suckers.”
― Gretchen McNeil, quote from Possess
“human Reason cannot be reduced to the result of evolutionary adaptation; art is not just a heightened procedure of providing sensual pleasures, but a medium of Truth;”
― Slavoj Žižek, quote from The Parallax View
“chest. Everything looked strange and slow. Vernon bent over him. He felt him give his chest a big shove, and he felt his arms being raised. All at once the pressure seemed to break, and he coughed violently. Vernon rolled him to his side. He coughed, coughed again, felt a blinding icy headache take hold. Reality returned with a vengeance. Tom struggled to sit up. Vernon put his arms under his shoulders and supported him. “What happened?” “This foolish brother of yours, this Vernito, jumped into that river and pulled you out from under those logs. I have never seen such craziness in my life.” “He did?” Tom turned and looked at Vernon. He was soaked, and his forehead was cut. Blood and water ran together into his beard. Vernon grasped him, and he stood up. His head cleared a little more, and the pounding headache began to subside. He look down into the roaring chute of water ripping into the frenzied pool jammed full of broken tree trunks and branches. He looked at Vernon again. It finally sank in. “You,” he said incredulously. Vernon shrugged. “You saved my life.” “Well, you saved mine,” he said, almost defensively. “You decapitated a snake for me. All I did was jump.” Don Alfonso said, “By the Virgin Mary, I still cannot”
― Douglas Preston, quote from The Codex
“But what is it, to be an artist? Nothing shows up the general human dislike of thinking, and man's innate craving to be comfortable, better than his attitude to this question. When these worthy people are affected by a work of art, they humbly say that that sort of thing is a 'gift.' And because in their innocence they assume that beautiful and uplifting results must have beautiful and uplifting causes, they never dream that the 'gift' in question is a very dubious affair and rests upon extremely sinister foundations.
[...]
Listen to this. I know a banker, grey-haired business man, who has a gift for
writing stories. He employs this gift in his idle hours, and some of his stories are of the
first rank. But despiteI say despite-this excellent gift his withers are by no means
unwrung: on the contrary, he has had to serve a prison sentence, on anything but trifling
grounds. Yes, it was actually first in prison that he became conscious of his gift, and his
experiences as a convict are the main theme in all his works. One might be rash enough
to conclude that a man has to be at home in some kind of jail in order to become a poet.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories
“Little girl, little boy
If love has a way
Fill their fields with laughter
And scatter the sun on their day
And if it should happen to rain
Make their raindrops kisses
Straight from heaven above
That touch their hands and faces
And that fill them with love
And make the moon reflect their smiles
And their stars plenty
And, above all, keep them together
And hold them as you may
Forever and ever
Until their last day.”
― Laura Miller, quote from My Butterfly
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