Author Profile
Philippe Petit
1949 • French • Celebrity
61
Total Quotes
Collected Meditations
Showing 61 quotesI am fascinated by the engineering. The science of constructing and understanding why it stands. And I am drawn by the madness, the beauty, the theatricality, the poetry and soul of the wire. And you cannot be a wire-walker without mingling those two ways of seeing life.— Philippe Petit
For me, since I have a life wish, not a death wish, for me, I was not gambling my life. I was doing something much more beautiful. I was carrying my life across.— Philippe Petit
I was thrown out of different schools because I was practicing my arts - magic, juggling, and the high wire.— Philippe Petit
What I think tailors the creativity of most people are the rules that we learn from the age we are very small - in school, our parents.— Philippe Petit
It's very normal - when you're not used to the world of the high wire, it's very normal to be simply terrified. The reason I'm not is because I've done it for so many years.— Philippe Petit
To be able to create fully, it's maybe fine that you learn the rules, but you have to forget and to rebel against those rules.— Philippe Petit
Truly, from a very early age, I started distancing myself from other kids, not out of willingness, but just out of the nature of my energy. I liked to do things solely, and I already had a taste of the quest for perfection, which is unusual in a little kid.— Philippe Petit
How could I share with you how I felt when two towers that I loved, two pieces of steel and glass and concrete fell down, when actually they took with them thousands of human lives? That is the actual tragedy. But those towers were almost human for me. I was in love with them, and that's why I married them with a tight rope.— Philippe Petit
On one day of the week, I relax - which is not true, I work furiously on other things. 'Relax' is not a word to me.— Philippe Petit
I hate all electronic things that are supposed to help the human being. You don't smell, you don't hear, you don't touch anymore.— Philippe Petit
I love or hate things straight away. I like to go directly to action to see the result. I think I must be difficult, but at the same time, it's not for me to say.— Philippe Petit
There is a child inside me that wants to come out and do something to surprise all the adults.— Philippe Petit
I started putting a wire up in secret and performing without permission. Notre Dame, the Sydney Harbor Bridge, the World Trade Center. And I developed a certitude, a faith that convinced me that I will get safely to the other side. If not, I will never do that first step.— Philippe Petit