Alejandro Jodorowsky Quotes

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.

We all exist in our own personal reality of craziness.

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.

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

I believe in mysticism, with an interior goal, and you are your own temple and your own priest. I dont believe anymore in religions, because you see today there are religious wars, prejudice, false morals, and the woman is despised. Religion is too old now; its from another century, its not for today.

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

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!

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.

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.

It's very difficult to live with religious ideas. I can't compare religion to the movies. I can fuse them.

Birds born in cages think that flying is a disease.

I was raping Frank Herbert, but with love.

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

You are excrement. You can change yourself into gold.

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

I don't think of an actor. I think in the character, and then I search for the actor. Usually I'm thinking without names, because they will change my idea. No big egos. If I want egos - just mine. That is enough.

Don't make your living with cinema because Hollywood will take you, will eat you, will destroy you. This is the reality. You have a good picture, have success, you take the person and they destroy you.

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

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.

Words don't heal. Art heals!

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.

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

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.

I grew up in the north of Chile, and this is why there are a lot of religious symbols in my pictures, because the Catholic Church in Latin America is very strong. If I was born in Japan, I would speak about Buddhism, but I was born in South America.

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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."

When I was a young person I went to the university and I learned a rational language, to think with the left side of the brain. But in the right side of the brain you have intuition and imagination. Words are not the truth; they indicate the way to go, but you need to go alone, in silence. Symbols have a language that kills the words.

You need to fight in order to count. Don't be afraid to believe the impossible and then fight with yourself to ameliorate yourself. Do it. Believe in yourself. Let a good seed be a good seed now, and then we'll have a good tree.

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 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.

Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.

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

I don't live in France; I live in myself.

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.

Every person has a talent, but not the same one. Every person has to discover his personal talent and go with his talent. And then you are you, and what you do, you do because you love what you do, not because you want to be famous or because you're making money. You do the work because you love it.

The world is how we see the world. Some people see the world good, the other people see the world bad. Every person has an idea of the world with a subjective [viewpoint].

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.

I don't see myself as a moviemaker only, you know? 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.

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