Top 66 Philippe Petit Quotes

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.

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.

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.

If I am practicing on the wire, and you pushed me, I would not move, and if you take a piece of wood and beat me up on the shoulder and the head, I would not move. You would not put me out of balance. You would not be able to. I am solid as granite when I am on the tight rope, and I should be.

It’s always easy to describe something complex by applying to it an already known label.

I’ve been arrested many times for illegal high wire walking and illegal street performing.

I didn’t go to school much. I was thrown out of different schools, and my university is the street.

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.

On one day of the week, I relax – which is not true, I work furiously on other things. ‘Relax’ is not a word to me.

I was in art school once a week from six to 16, which was essential in shaping my artistic sensitivity.

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.

There was a time when fire and story would fall asleep in unison. It was dream time.

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.

I’m a wire-walker, but actually, I’m a moviemaker that hasn’t done his first movie.

I am fascinated by the engineering. The science of constructing and understanding why it stands. And I am drawn by the madness, the beauty, the theatricality, the poetry and soul of the wire. And you cannot be a wire-walker without mingling those two ways of seeing life.

Every year, I am conscious of the anniversary of my 1974 World Trade Center walk.

An intellectual challenge presents itself? I am in bliss. Instantly, it brings forth the notion of triumph.

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.

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.

I would not describe my personality. And I think when you describe people, you are making a mistake. That’s not how they are; that’s how you perceive them at that moment. It’s limiting in front of something that is magnificent and unlimited: life.

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.

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.

I was never part of the sailing circle, but I enjoy when I’m invited to sail.

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.

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.

In my life, I wanted to meet certain people. I never met Charlie Chaplin, but I met Werner Herzog.

If I have to make a self-portrait, I would put poetry and rebellion on the list. To be able to walk on a wire, to be able to juggle six hoops, you need focus, another word for tenacity, which is passion.

Obsessed people are not humorless at all.

I am the poet of the high wire – I never do stunts; I do theatrical performances.

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.

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.

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.

I would like to continue to tell stories of what I did in a biographical way, so I will continue to write.

It’s very easy to walk on a wire if you spend a whole lifetime practicing for it.

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.

I walk on the wire; it’s my profession, and there are no two high wire walks alike.

I wanted all my life to give my world into other arts – books, plays, movies – but I didn’t want to sell out.

As a high wire walker, I do not allow myself to ‘leave the wire’ during a performance.

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.

There is a child inside me that wants to come out and do something to surprise all the adults.

I am a wire-walker. I can walk any time, anywhere – I’m indestructible.

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.

When art in general, and film in particular, succeeds is when it pulls you away onto a voyage. Then it’s a good film.

I love to remember the World Trade Centre walk, but it should not define me.

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.

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.

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.

It’s very normal – when you’re not used to the world of the high wire, it’s very normal to be simply terrified. The reason I’m not is because I’ve done it for so many years.

Death frames the high wire. But I don’t see myself as taking risks. I do all of the preparations that a non-death seeker would do.

I am a thief of knowledge, and in a survival way, I had to solve all the problems around me.

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.

I have been expelled from five different schools when I was a kid. And I learned basically all what I do by myself.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My parents wanted me to have an honorable profession and not to be a jester.

I’ve frowned at the idea of breaking records, the first one to do something, or do it longer, higher, more difficult.

I focus, I invent, I transform, I challenge, I attempt, I observe, I perform.

On the high wire, within months, I’m able to master all the tricks they do in the circus, except I am not satisfied.

Passion is the motto of all my actions.

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.

When you are a young person, the world is yours. You can do the impossible.

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.