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I love to remember the World Trade Centre walk, but it should not define me.
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I didn't go to school much. I was thrown out of different schools, and my university is the street.
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It would be very, very dangerous for a wire walker to experience fear while he is balancing on the wire. Fear has its place on earth, before and maybe after a high-wire walk, but not during for me.
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Every year, I am conscious of the anniversary of my 1974 World Trade Center walk.
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I keep saying I am an auto-didact, but I have a lot of outside influences. One I could cite is juggler Francis Brunn, who was the first man to throw ten rings in the air; he was really an amazing juggler who showed onstage the quest for perfection.
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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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My parents were intelligent and encouraging, but at the same time, they were displeased at me becoming a wandering troubadour and wire walker.
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My parents wanted me to have an honorable profession and not to be a jester.
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I am the poet of the high wire - I never do stunts; I do theatrical performances.
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Certainly, in the story of my life, the walk between the Twin Towers was one of the grandest, one of the most memorable, but not solely the grandest and the most memorable.
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I am not up there by chance. I am there by choice. And I know the wire. And I know my limits. And I am a madman of details.
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I have been expelled from five different schools when I was a kid. And I learned basically all what I do by myself.
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I am a thief of knowledge, and in a survival way, I had to solve all the problems around me.
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When you are a young person, the world is yours. You can do the impossible.
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I found out that total creativity involves a certain intellectual rebellion - not to become a criminal, but somehow. to be totally creating, you have to do things that are a little bit forbidden. You have to feel free, and we know freedom is a hard thing to get.
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Truly, from a very early age, I started distancing myself from other kids, not out of willingness, but just out of the nature of my energy. I liked to do things solely, and I already had a taste of the quest for perfection, which is unusual in a little kid.
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It's always easy to describe something complex by applying to it an already known label.
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I would like to continue to tell stories of what I did in a biographical way, so I will continue to write.
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If I had been born in the circus, my parents would have pushed me on that little high wire at four years old. That's when the body is most limber to learn those acrobatics.
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I'm a wire-walker, but actually, I'm a moviemaker that hasn't done his first movie.
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Faith is what replaces doubt in my dictionary.
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For years, I have been working on crossing the Grand Canyon. Actually, there is nobody who says 'no,' but since this is a project that comes from me and not a commission, I have to find the money, plan the logistics, etcetera.
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Metaphorically speaking, of course, if I put a problem behind my pillow and fall asleep, very often because my brain went to sleep with that idea or the problem alive, very often in the middle of the night I wake up, and I wake up with a solution or with a direction of solution.
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I was never part of the sailing circle, but I enjoy when I'm invited to sail.