Alejandro Jodorowsky Quotes - Page 3

Every artist - even if they do Superman, they do Batman, and things like that - they are speaking about his life. Every person, every artist makes his life an artwork.

I want to liberate my imagination and my mind with every kind of movie. That is what I wanted to do all my life.

When you put a great amount of energy and hope in a big project, you can be destroyed if you don't do it. But myself, I say: "To fail is only to see the way to fail."

I don't see myself as a movie maker only. When I can do a picture, I do. But I don't work like a business, in pictures. I am not obliged to make one picture after the other in order to live. I write books, I write for comic books, I give lectures... I live. And when the opportunity comes to do a picture, I do a picture.

I wanted to make a film that gave the people who took LSD at that time the hallucinations that you get with that drug, but without hallucinating.

I am an artist, you understand? 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.

For many years, I did pantomime with Marcel Marceau. I was a writer for him and got to know very well how to use the body for illustration. I wanted to do a mother without arms, but using the arms of her son in Santa Sangre. The tragedy should always have something funny. Something weird.

I think the art of filmmaking is something you learn through actions, by doing it, not by learning theories. And as you do it, your mind starts to change.

Five cats and a woman. That is all I need in life.

My consciousness is without limits more than when I was 40 or 50.

If you are great, 'El Topo' is a great picture. If you are limited, 'El Topo' is limited.

I was raping Frank Herbert, but with love.

I shoot in Mexico, but I can shoot in India, anywhere. I have no nationality myself. My nationality is the planet.

I ask of cinema what most North Americans ask of psychedelic drugs.

My wife is 37 years younger than me. I don't feel the difference.

I am not a commercial industry creator. I don't believe in making art to make money.

The first thing I didn't understand was my life. It's a mystery. And today I don't understand economy or politics. I don't know why politics or economy are destroying the world, but I will understand after understanding.

The planet is ill, everyone knows that. But I need to be optimistic, otherwise I would just be adding to the negativity. So every night I come on Madrid TV and read a piece of good news.

I don't regret any past. I am not there. I am not sorry not to make pictures, because I know one day I will do it. I intend to live 150 years.

I write books, I write for comic books, I give lectures... I live. And when the opportunity comes to do a picture, I do a picture.

The mole is an animal that digs passages searching for the sun. Sometimes he reaches the surface. When he looks at the sun he goes blind.

I was very scared when I saw it, because Dune was for me very important in my life. I was very sad I could not do it. When I saw that David Lynch would do it, I was very scared, because I admire him as a movie-maker, and I thought he would do well. But when I see the picture, I realize he never understood this picture. It's not a David Lynch picture. It's the producer who made that picture, no? Who made this horror. For David Lynch, it was a job. A commercial job. It never was that for me.

Movies have heart. Have mind. Have power. Have ambition.

Terrorists are not bad; they are limited by circumstances. They are human beings. I am very, very, very sad when they explode themselves and kill 40 to 60 persons. It's terrible. But also, I am sad for them, a young person who lost his whole life. It's terrible. They are limited by religion, by politics, by economical interests.

I live making comics. Comics is an industrial art but less suffering, because comics are for young people who are more adventurous. I do that. I live off comics, and then I write books, but when you want movies, you cannot make movies without money.