Guy Laliberte

Originally the dream was about traveling and developing a job that would permit me to travel. And I decided to go into street performing because it was a traveling job; it would let me go around the world.

My first dream was to travel. I was attracted to different places, different colors of skin, different food. When I was 18 in 1977, I went to Europe with my accordion and discovered the pleasure of entertaining people.

I believe that the profits will come from the quality of your creative products. Since the beginning, I've always wanted to develop a self-feeding circle of creative productions: the positive financial returns from one show would be used to develop and create a new show, and so on.

I'm a humanist. I always believed, even with Cirque du Soliel, that this is my way to contribute to a better world. I believe I'm very privileged, but many people face the reality when they wake up in the morning of not having food or a glass of water. Life's been good to me, and I believe you have to feed the circle of life.

I do like the thrill of risk-taking, but it's always carefully calculated. I have done many high risk undertakings, but I have always measured the stakes. Not feeding the fear nor the doubt. But I also believe that you need to fuel passion in whatever you do. This is what I am trying to teach my children today.

I am an atheist. I was born a Catholic, but after I had traveled to Northern Ireland with some Catholic friends, and we had a horrible experience with the English Protestant police, I lost all taste for formal religion.

I always have traveled with a camera throughout my life, but I always had my old 35mm film camera. When I was training to go into space, the only equipment there was a digital camera. I went through a fast-track class on Earth. It actually was fun, though I'm basically a dinosaur with computers.

We are in a position of financial and social power, and we could be agents of change in our society. Without pretension, I believe we could be a nice little gardener who takes care of the garden, and hopefully our neighbor will do the same. Then, maybe we'll achieve a better world.

I don't believe in pitfalls. I believe in taking risks and not doing the same thing twice.