Philippe Petit Quotes
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My first walk illegally at 20 years old was between the towers of Notre Dame.
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I am the poet of the high wire - I never do stunts; I do theatrical performances.
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I was born in a world of opera, theatre, films, poetry, art, and therefore, out of the wire, I made a stage. That's why they call me a high wire artist.
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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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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 did a walk in 1973 illegally in the northern side of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
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I, like everybody else, have a certain fear of heights, and I have to be very careful when I am in the clouds, but it is also what I love; it is my domain, so when you love something, you don't have fear.
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Passion is the motto of all my actions.
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I started putting a wire up in secret and performing without permission. Notre Dame, the Sydney Harbor Bridge, the World Trade Center. And I developed a certitude, a faith that convinced me that I will get safely to the other side. If not, I will never do that first step.
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Obsessed people are not humorless at all.
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An intellectual challenge presents itself? I am in bliss. Instantly, it brings forth the notion of triumph.
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I needed more knowledge in rigging and knotting. I started collecting books on knots and really learning more and more. That's how it started. And also in magic, of course. With a piece of rope, you can do magic.
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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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My journey has always been the balance between chaos and order.
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How could I share with you how I felt when two towers that I loved, two pieces of steel and glass and concrete fell down, when actually they took with them thousands of human lives? That is the actual tragedy. But those towers were almost human for me. I was in love with them, and that's why I married them with a tight rope.
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On a very long and very high wire, I will not hope to not be blown off by high winds. I will have the certitude that such could not happen.
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I've been arrested many times for illegal high wire walking and illegal street performing.
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I've frowned at the idea of breaking records, the first one to do something, or do it longer, higher, more difficult.
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I love or hate things straight away. I like to go directly to action to see the result. I think I must be difficult, but at the same time, it's not for me to say.
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Talking about theater, actually, I built a little barn in upstate New York, and I call it 'the smallest theater in the world,' but it has a mini stage and a red velvet curtain.
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Fame was never something I was seeking in my artistic journey. It's to be used as a tool for an artist to break open doors and keep creating. That's how I enjoyed fame in '74; it was not just for the emptiness of being famous.