Best 77 quotes of Alejandro Jodorowsky on MyQuotes

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

And I imagine... with great pleasure... all the horrible stirrings of the nonmanifested to bring forth the scream which creates the universe. Maybe one day I'll see you trembling, and you'll go into convulsion and grow larger and smaller until your mouth opens and the world will come from your mouth, escaping through the window like a river, and it will flood the city. And then we'll begin to live.

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

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.

Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.

Birds born in cages think that flying is a disease.

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.

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 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.

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.

For art to be art it has to cure.

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

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.

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.

I am an artist. 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. And you are like in some kind of possession, where you are doing anything to get the visual. You become another person. You're becoming an artist in action. And then a lot of miracles come. A lot of discovering. It's a very complicated thing.

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

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

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

I believe in mysticism, with an interior goal, and you are your own temple and your own priest.

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

If the picture is not an artistic picture, it's show, like television. Television series are very funny, but it's a collective production. An industrial art. A car is not made by a person, it's made by a group of creators, only to go to the market to buy your cigarettes. That is a car - they are not a big art, they are a little art.

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.

I have an ambition to live 300 years. I will not live 300 years. Maybe I will live one year more. But I have the ambition. Why you will not have ambition? Why? Have the greatest ambition possible. You want to be immortal? Fight to be immortal. Do it. You want to make the most fantastic art or movie? Try. If you fail, is not important. We need to try.

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.

In Chile they have no movies. They have awful popular movies. I am not a Latin American creator.

I think Twitter is the literature of the 21st century. I think it's an incredible art because when you make a book, you don't know who reads it. But every line, I write a million people, they read it, and then they insult me, they love me, they discuss, they give an opinion instantly, immediately. They are completely in communication, immediately. That is a real art.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Movies have an enormous power to open the mind and the heart and everything. You are sitting and seeing something moving in front of you, and then your mind goes into a trance. You are completely there. It's a real great art; it's not only a business. It's to open the mind, to understand this mystery within reality. This is why we need it.

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

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

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

My writing routine is everyday I put a record on, the same one since 20 years. Then I burn a stick of incense, I put perfume here on the insides of my soles, I paint my left testicle red, and I write.

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.

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

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.