Alejandro Jodorowsky Quotes

We all exist in our own personal reality of craziness.

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

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.

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.

Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.

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

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

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!

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

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.

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

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.

Life is a mixing of all kind of things: comedy and tragedy going together.

People say I am mad. I am not mad. I am trying to heal my soul.

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

I am not a normal person. I am living in a normal body, but my mind is not normal.

When the bull's-eye becomes as big in your mind as an elephant, you are sure to hit it.

You are excrement. You can change yourself into gold.

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.

For a true artist, difficulties become opportunities and clouds become solid present.

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.

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

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.

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

Birds born in cages think that flying is a disease.

You are engaging in madness. I feel obliged to accompany you.

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

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.

For art to be art it has to cure.

Humanity are not individuals; we are collective. And if we have difference, we have wars all the time. We have crisis. We need to open our mind. This is the only solution we have.

You can't have a masterpiece without madness.

Art gives to you a new conception of reality, opens your mind, opens your heart, opens your desire of action.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Words don't heal. Art heals!

I am like the rain, I go where I'm needed.

My father was a monster. A monster! I cut with my family when I was 23 and I never see them again.

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

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.

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."

A man doesn't cry. In my life, I've never cried. I cannot do it. I am a man. How will I cry?

I don't want to make a style. Not tragedy, not comedy. Life is a mixing of all kind of things: comedy and tragedy going together.

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.

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.

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.