The spirit of creation is the spirit of contradiction, the breakthrough of appearances toward an unknown reality. - Jean Cocteau

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?

It's perfectly normal that extraordinary things happen to me. I'm an exceptional person. Oh, don't think I'm boasting. I mean to say that, unfortunately, I'm exceptional and that, unfortunately, I can't live by the rules. I must make my own.

Last month, coming out of the Rue d'Athènes, where they were showing Le Sang d'un Poète, I told Gide that I couldn't bear to see the film again because each shot is so slow. He replied that I was wrong, that this slowness was a rhythm, and that these slow shots coming one after another formed a special tempo, my tempo, a procedure of my own.
No doubt he's right, and it would be dangerous to upset a rhythm that comes from within oneself, through fear of this rhythm, and to impose another, artificial, one which would not suit it.