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Jean Cocteau

"Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for."

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"Poetry is indispensable - if I only knew what for."

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Amber Hurdle

"It is strange how a scrap of poetry works in the mind and makes the legs move in time to it along the road."

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Amber Hurdle

"Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it."

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Amber Hurdle

"I don't think of poetry as a 'rational' activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me."

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Amber Hurdle

"Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry."

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Amber Hurdle

"One could do worse than be a swinger of birches."

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Amber Hurdle

"Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet."

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Amber Hurdle

"There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry."

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Amber Hurdle

"Will the veiled sister pray for Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee, Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray For children at the gate Who will not go away and cannot pray: Pray for those who chose and oppose."

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Amber Hurdle

"The words of the true poems give you more than poems, they give you to form for yourself poems, religions, politics, war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, daily life, & everything else, they balance the ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes, they do not seek beauty, they are sought, forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick. They prepare for death, yet they are not the finish, but rather the outset, they bring none of his or her terminus or to be content & full, whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of the stars, to learn one of the meanings, to launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless rings & never be quiet again."

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Amber Hurdle

"Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door;Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shoreWhere neither piping bird nor peeping dawnDisturbs the eternal sleep,But in the stillness far withdrawnOur dreamless rest for evermore we keep."

Explore more quotes by Jean Cocteau

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Jean Cocteau
"The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth."
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Jean Cocteau
"There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them."
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Jean Cocteau
"Asking an artist to talk about his work is like asking a plant to discuss horticulture."
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Jean Cocteau
"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."
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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."
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Jean Cocteau
"The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee."
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Jean Cocteau
"Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently."
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Jean Cocteau
"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."
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Jean Cocteau
"Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying."
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Jean Cocteau
"The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up."
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