Philippe Petit Quotes
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I did a walk in 1973 illegally in the northern side of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
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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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My parents wanted me to have an honorable profession and not to be a jester.
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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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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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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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Obsessed people are not humorless at all.
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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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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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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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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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Every year, I am conscious of the anniversary of my 1974 World Trade Center walk.
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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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I'm a wire-walker, but actually, I'm a moviemaker that hasn't done his first movie.
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My time is always divided when I prepare for a wire walk. First I dream, technically and artistically, and then I go to work, and I am the master rigger, climbing trees and ladders and constructing. Only then I change my cap and become the performer.
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I love to remember the World Trade Centre walk, but it should not define me.
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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 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 didn't go to school much. I was thrown out of different schools, and my university is the street.
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When a loved one disappears, you continue to live with the accompaniment of that person. One has to find a balance between joy and sorrow.
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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 you see how carefully I prepare for any kind of walk, legal or illegal, small or big, you will see that, actually, I narrow the unknown to virtually nothing. And that's when I am ready to walk on the wire.
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You see, it's actually very good that a human activity is performed very close to death, because that's where life is. Life is, at its most valuable and most full, very close to the boundary of life.