Philippe Petit Quotes
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When I was learning by myself, despite my parents, despite my teachers, despite society, when I was fighting for building my life as a young wire walker at age 16, I didn't have feelings, I had certainties.
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If a leaf fell from a tree, I'd stop juggling and play with the leaf. I went to my prop bag and got a little bandage and stuck the leaf back on the tree. People loved it.
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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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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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I was in art school once a week from six to 16, which was essential in shaping my artistic sensitivity.
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I started very early, from five or six years old, to climb. To climb trees, to climb rocks everywhere I could. At some point, of course, I used a rope.
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I hate all electronic things that are supposed to help the human being. You don't smell, you don't hear, you don't touch anymore.
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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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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.
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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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Usually, when I walk on a wire, I inspect the anchor point on both sides before crossing.
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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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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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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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It is treacherous on a high wire to change your focus point and suddenly look down.
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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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I will never fall prey to celebrity because I am too busy. I have other things to do than look at myself in the mirror.
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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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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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I have been performing in the street for more than 50 years: magic for basically 60 years, and the high wire 45 years. The beauty of it is that it's never the same. It's never easy. And yet, part of my art is to make it look easy.
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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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It's very easy to walk on a wire if you spend a whole lifetime practicing for it.
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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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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.