Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like — then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.

Cocteau’s advice turns the usual relationship between artist and critic on its head. Instead of smoothing away what provokes resistance, he suggests treating early objections as a diagnostic tool: what irritates a critic may be precisely what is unfamiliar, personal, or stylistically distinctive. The quote champions artistic individuality over consensus approval, implying that the most “worth keeping” in a work is what cannot be easily assimilated to prevailing taste. It also warns against the temptation to revise toward bland competence; the artist should refine the idiosyncratic element rather than erase it, converting perceived flaws into a signature.