Philippe Petit Quotes
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I started making monkey bridges, like kids do, and climbing and rappelling with ropes. Very naturally, I needed some knots. At the very beginning, I didn't care, I didn't know, and then slowly I started to know, and I started to care. I wanted to know more knots or the right knot for the special action.
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There is a child inside me that wants to come out and do something to surprise all the adults.
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If I see three oranges, I have to juggle. And if I see two towers, I have to walk.
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The impossible - we are told - cannot be achieved. To overcome the 'impossible,' we need to use our wits and be fearless. We need to break the rules and to circumvent - some would one say to cheat.
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This moment where we think we rest, when the brain is floating, you know, in sleep, is actually a moment where I could be very creative in a very strange, uncontrolled way.
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To be able to create fully, it's maybe fine that you learn the rules, but you have to forget and to rebel against those rules.
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The wire is a safe place for me to be. The street is not. Life is not. It's a rigorous and simple path. It's straight. You don't have meanders like, you know, on the ground, in life.
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Notre Dame and Sydney - that was nothing. Notre Dame doesn't have a police station; it is not 1,000 or so feet high. It was a public structure, very easy to access. And Sydney Harbour Bridge was half-and-half: a bridge, in the middle of the night. The World Trade Center was the end of the world. Electronic devices, police dogs.
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I was not born into the world of the stuntman and the daredevil; I was born into the world of theater and writing and sculpting and classical music.
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Usually, when I walk on a wire, I inspect the anchor point on both sides before crossing.
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Art is maybe a subversive activity. There is a certain rebellion when you are an artist at heart, even if only in the art of living.
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As a high wire walker, I do not allow myself to 'leave the wire' during a performance.
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When I was six years old, I fell in love with magic. For Christmas, I got a magic box and a very old book on card manipulation. Somehow, I was more interested in pure manipulation than in all the silly little tricks in the box.
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It is very normal for people on the ground to look at somebody apparently walking in midair and thinking first that person is crazy and thinking secondly that person risks his or her life.
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As I'm studying magic, juggling is mentioned repeatedly as a great way to acquire dexterity and coordination. Now, I had long admired how fast and fluidly jugglers make objects fly. So that's it. I'm 14; I'm becoming a juggler.
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It's very easy to walk on a wire if you spend a whole lifetime practicing for it.
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When art in general, and film in particular, succeeds is when it pulls you away onto a voyage. Then it's a good film.
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What I think tailors the creativity of most people are the rules that we learn from the age we are very small - in school, our parents.
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I have a fear of water, believe it or not. To put a wire 12 feet over a swimming pool frightens me. I don't like water.
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I wanted all my life to give my world into other arts - books, plays, movies - but I didn't want to sell out.
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It is treacherous on a high wire to change your focus point and suddenly look down.
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My parents wanted me to have an honorable profession and not to be a jester.
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Every year, I am conscious of the anniversary of my 1974 World Trade Center walk.
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It's part of my life to feel like a criminal, to have eyes in my back and see if I'm being followed. It's a feeling that comes from street juggling because I have been arrested so many times.