Style can make complicated things seem simple, or simple things complicated.

Cocteau treats “style” not as ornament but as a force that shapes perception. The same subject can appear lucid or baffling depending on the writer’s or artist’s manner—choices of structure, diction, rhythm, and emphasis. Style can clarify by selecting the right angle and removing clutter, making complexity feel inevitable and graspable. But it can also obscure, turning the straightforward into something pretentious or needlessly intricate. The remark doubles as a warning and a credo: technique carries ethical weight because it governs what an audience can understand, and it reveals how easily “difficulty” can be manufactured—or dissolved—by presentation.