Alejandro Jodorowsky Quotes

Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.

You live in the image you have of the world. Every one of us lives in a different world, with different space and different time.

Failure doesn't mean anything, it just means changing paths.

Awakening is not a thing. It is not a goal, not a concept. It is not something to be attained. It is a metamorphosis. If the caterpillar thinks about the butterfly it is to become, saying ‘And then I shall have wings and antennae,’ there will never be a butterfly. The caterpillar must accept its own disappearance in its transformation. When the marvelous butterfly takes wing, nothing of the caterpillar remains.

Every one of us is a perfect human being, deformed by the family, the society and the culture.

I have an ambition to live 300 years. I will not live 300 years. Maybe I will live one year more. But I have the ambition. Why you will not have ambition? Why? Have the greatest ambition possible. You want to be immortal? Fight to be immortal. Do it. You want to make the most fantastic art or movie? Try. If you fail, is not important. We need to try.

One day, someone showed me a glass of water that was half full. And he said, "Is it half full or half empty?" So I drank the water. No more problem.

Normality is to be different. Every person is a different person. And one day you need to be aware of your difference. Aware that you are not the same as the others. That is to be normal.

What I am trying to do when I use symbols is to awaken in your unconscious some reaction. I am very conscious of what I am using because symbols can be very dangerous. When we use normal language we can defend ourselves because our society is a linguistic society, a semantic society. But when you start to speak, not with words, but only with images, the people cannot defend themselves.

I never know if my picture is a good picture or a bad picture, because I'm not making pictures thinking of the public, I'm making pictures to realize myself.

Maybe if literature was prohibited the same way as cocaine, people out of pure curiosity would try to get a couple of lines

Have a dream. Fight to do a dream. Don't ask if it is possible to do something or if not possible. Try to do it!

Let the inner god that is in each one of us speak. The temple is your body, and the priest is your heart: it is from here that every awareness must begin.

The apocalypse is now! Americans know this, that the only hope is the flying saucers. Do you know how I see the world? Like a person who is dying. It's a worm who is dying to make a butterfly. We must not stop the worm from dying, we must help the worm to die to help the butterfly to be born. We need to dance with death. This world is dying, but very well. We will make a big, big enormous butterfly. You and I will be the first movements in the wings of the butterfly because we are speaking like this.

I am an artist. For me, a picture is like poetry. When you make art, this is not coming from an intellectual place. It's coming from the deep side of your unconscious, your soul. And you are like in some kind of possession, where you are doing anything to get the visual. You become another person. You're becoming an artist in action. And then a lot of miracles come. A lot of discovering. It's a very complicated thing.

Most directors make films with their eyes; I make films with my testicles.

The only thing a master can teach is how to learn about yourself. There are no secrets. They are only techniques to waken yourself.

Life is a way of perfection. You need to work on yourself. You become a good person. If you do your work you will discover sublime feelings.

If art is not a medicine for the society, it is a poison.

One does not go to the theater to escape from himself, but to reestablish contact with the mystery that we all are.

The imagination wants to construct the new worlds, no? Creativity is a solution. If I ask you, "What is your goal in life? How many years do you have to live before to die? How many years do you have? And what you will do with these years you have?" You have pressure there. "How you will realize a good life? How? Tell me!" Then, you start to open your mind.

You are excrement. You can change yourself into gold.

You can't have a masterpiece without madness.

One becomes wise only in measures, as he goes through his own insanity.

Every mind has another vision of reality. There is not a common reality. Every person thinks he is like the others, but every person is different, living in his own psychology.