Top 100 Philippe Petit Quotes
#1. It's impossible, that's for sure. So let's start working.
Philippe Petit
#2. Improvisation is empowering because it welcomes the unknown. And since what's impossible is always unknown, it allows me to believe I can cheat the impossible.
Philippe Petit
#3. Wirewalker, trust your feet! Let them lead you; they know the way.
Philippe Petit
#4. It cannot be done all at once. To overpower vertigo - the keeper of the abyss- one must tame it, cautiously.
Philippe Petit
#5. If I see three oranges, I have to juggle. And if I see two towers, I have to walk.
Philippe Petit
#6. 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.
Philippe Petit
#7. 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.
Philippe Petit
#8. I'm a wire-walker, but actually, I'm a moviemaker that hasn't done his first movie.
Philippe Petit
#9. 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.
Philippe Petit
#10. Life should be lived on the edge of life. You have to exercise rebellion: to refuse to tape yourself to rules, to refuse your own success, to refuse to repeat yourself, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge - and then you are going to live your life on a tightrope.
Philippe Petit
#11. 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.
Philippe Petit
#12. When I perform outside, the major problem that could arise is strong wind.I spend months preparing for the types of wind that occur in different locations.
Philippe Petit
#13. I wanted all my life to give my world into other arts - books, plays, movies - but I didn't want to sell out.
Philippe Petit
#14. 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.
Philippe Petit
#15. 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.
Philippe Petit
#16. The rest is usually just an inhuman amount of tenacious work.
Philippe Petit
#17. I have been expelled from five different schools when I was a kid. And I learned basically all what I do by myself.
Philippe Petit
#18. When art in general, and film in particular, succeeds is when it pulls you away onto a voyage. Then it's a good film.
Philippe Petit
#19. 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.
Philippe Petit
#20. 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.
Philippe Petit
#21. For me, when I am on the wire, I do not have a problem of eliminating or blocking fear. I do not really feel fear, although it is a fearful activity to walk in thin air, as I do without any safety device, but I am not fearful.
Philippe Petit
#22. I have walked many times around the world and each time it's different from the last one. It feels a little bit like I am a theatrical director, creating a theatre in space. It's really a theater in the sky. But of course the World Trade Center is certainly the most well-known of my productions.
Philippe Petit
#23. 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.
Philippe Petit
#24. I love to remember the World Trade Centre walk, but it should not define me.
Philippe Petit
#25. It is treacherous on a high wire to change your focus point and suddenly look down.
Philippe Petit
#26. I am a thief of knowledge, and in a survival way, I had to solve all the problems around me.
Philippe Petit
#28. The practical answer is, no it would be totally impossible for young or foreign people to get access to roof of a building that stands in the heart of a giant city and to put a cable across.
Philippe Petit
#29. 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.
Philippe Petit
#30. I've frowned at the idea of breaking records, the first one to do something, or do it longer, higher, more difficult.
Philippe Petit
#31. The union of altitude and solitude fills me with an arrogant sense of ownership.
Philippe Petit
#32. To fight adversity, to improvise, to solve problems, and to save the coup, I had gathered all my senses into unusual configurations, which made me grow wild and enhanced my perceptions.
Philippe Petit
#33. 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.
Philippe Petit
#34. 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.
Philippe Petit
#35. My parents wanted me to have an honorable profession and not to be a jester.
Philippe Petit
#36. I am the poet of the high wire - I never do stunts; I do theatrical performances.
Philippe Petit
#37. Right after my Twin Towers walk, I was approached by hundreds of people, and I said no to all the offers. I could have become a millionaire overnight, obviously, but I said no, and I continue to be uninterested.
Philippe Petit
#38. I was in art school once a week from six to 16, which was essential in shaping my artistic sensitivity.
Philippe Petit
#39. Many people use the words 'death defying' or 'death wishing' when they talk about wire-walking. Many people have asked me: 'So do you have a death wish?' After doing a beautiful walk, I feel like punching them in the nose. It's indecent. I have a life wish.
Philippe Petit
#40. I usually practice on a small, low wire, that features the predominant wind. I study the meteorology of the place at the time that I am supposed to do my walk, and then I find the predominant direction and velocity of the wind and I train to fight that wind.
Philippe Petit
#41. 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.
Philippe Petit
#42. 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.
Philippe Petit
#43. And do not forget that the blood of rebellion flows through your veins, that around your soul meanders the river of perfection; above all stay devoted to your art - even if it is only the art of living! - above all remain loyal to it.
Philippe Petit
#44. 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.
Philippe Petit
#45. 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.
Philippe Petit
#46. The essential thing is to etch movements in the sky, movements so still they leave no trace. The essential thing is simplicity. / That is why the long path to perfection is horizontal.
Philippe Petit
#47. Limits exist only in the souls of those who do not dream.
Philippe Petit
#48. If it's a problem of fire, fire might very well be the answer.
Philippe Petit
#49. 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.
Philippe Petit
#50. Everybody wanted me to be rich and famous on my art. And I said no to all the commercials and all the seedy offers.
Philippe Petit
#51. 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.
Philippe Petit
#52. Of course, the slightest little mistake on the wire will deprive me of my life, so in that sense, yes, it is a dangerous profession. You have to pay attention; if not, you will lose your life.
Philippe Petit
#53. 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.
Philippe Petit
#55. 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.
Philippe Petit
#56. I walk on the wire; it's my profession, and there are no two high wire walks alike.
Philippe Petit
#57. 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.
Philippe Petit
#59. Believe marvels exist around you, inside others, within yourself. Go search for them. Gallop through life and without dismounting your horse manage (like a Cossack!) to pick up bits of otherworldliness lying on the path. Feed your imagination that way. That way, shape your destiny.
Philippe Petit
#60. 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.
Philippe Petit
#61. An intellectual challenge presents itself? I am in bliss. Instantly, it brings forth the notion of triumph.
Philippe Petit
#62. 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.
Philippe Petit
#63. As a high wire walker, I do not allow myself to 'leave the wire' during a performance.
Philippe Petit
#64. There is no such thing as motivation in my world. I am not motivated to do what I do. As an artist, I am driven, I am compelled, I am thrust forward by a force so rooted inside me, so convincing, that it seems futile to try to explain it. Although it has a name: passion.
Philippe Petit
#65. 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.
Philippe Petit
#66. My first walk illegally at 20 years old was between the towers of Notre Dame.
Philippe Petit
#67. Wire-walking in performance is one thing - I never fell, of course. If I had, I wouldn't be here talking about it.
Philippe Petit
#68. 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.
Philippe Petit
#69. Would anyone but a crazed bicephalous being, half engineer, half poet, willingly shackle himself to a venture of such magnitude? I am prisoner of my dream.
Philippe Petit
#70. Every year, I am conscious of the anniversary of my 1974 World Trade Center walk.
Philippe Petit
#71. 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.
Philippe Petit
#72. I was never part of the sailing circle, but I enjoy when I'm invited to sail.
Philippe Petit
#73. My journey has always been the balance between chaos and order.
Philippe Petit
#74. There is a child inside me that wants to come out and do something to surprise all the adults.
Philippe Petit
#75. 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.
Philippe Petit
#76. Whenever other worlds invite us, whenever we are balancing on the boundaries of our limited human condition, that's where life starts, that's where you start feeling yourself living.
Philippe Petit
#77. 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.
Philippe Petit
#78. 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.
Philippe Petit
#80. 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.
Philippe Petit
#81. I am a wire-walker. I can walk any time, anywhere - I'm indestructible.
Philippe Petit
#82. On one side, the mass of a mountain. A life I know.
On the other, the universe of the clouds, so full of unknown that it seems empty to us. Too much space.
Philippe Petit
#83. I don't have a career, I have a life. Don't think of a career, think about your passion and look for inspiration.
Philippe Petit
#84. I rendezvous with the long wire and perform the 'torero walk', gliding my feet, holding the pole away from my body, head high.
Philippe Petit
#85. In my life, I wanted to meet certain people. I never met Charlie Chaplin, but I met Werner Herzog.
Philippe Petit
#86. 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.
Philippe Petit
#87. 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.
Philippe Petit
#88. 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.
Philippe Petit
#90. I didn't go to school much. I was thrown out of different schools, and my university is the street.
Philippe Petit
#91. I don't like to risk my life, so I prepare sometimes for months or sometimes for years. But sometimes after a walk, I look what I have done, and I have a little bit of fear coming to me, just looking at pictures.
Philippe Petit
#92. On the high wire, within months, I'm able to master all the tricks they do in the circus, except I am not satisfied.
Philippe Petit
#93. I did a walk in 1973 illegally in the northern side of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
Philippe Petit
#94. It's very easy to walk on a wire if you spend a whole lifetime practicing for it.
Philippe Petit
#95. There was a time when fire and story would fall asleep in unison. It was dream time.
Philippe Petit
#96. 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.
Philippe Petit
#97. 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.
Philippe Petit
#98. 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.
Philippe Petit
#99. My parents were intelligent and encouraging, but at the same time, they were displeased at me becoming a wandering troubadour and wire walker.
Philippe Petit
#100. Usually, when I walk on a wire, I inspect the anchor point on both sides before crossing.
Philippe Petit
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