I didn't want to make cinema so a person forgets himself and has a lot of fun. 'I forget myself, I am a little poor consumer.' I wanted to make a picture where someone who sees it say, 'This is me! This is me!'
— Alejandro Jodorowsky
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 am not a commercial industry creator. I don't believe in making art to make money.
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.
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 mixing of all kind of things: comedy and tragedy going together.
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 wife is 37 years younger than me. I don't feel the difference.
If you are great, 'El Topo' is a great picture. If you are limited, 'El Topo' is limited.
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.
I believe in mysticism, with an interior goal, and you are your own temple and your own priest. I don't 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; it's from another century, it's not for today.
I want to liberate my imagination and my mind with every kind of movie. That is what I wanted to do all my life.
People say I am mad. I am not mad. I am trying to heal my soul.
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.
My consciousness is without limits more than when I was 40 or 50.
I am not a normal person. I am living in a normal body, but my mind is not normal.
I don't live in France; I live in myself.
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.
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.
Five cats and a woman. That is all I need in life.
My father was a monster. A monster! I cut with my family when I was 23 and I never see them again.
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 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 want to just love my family; I want to love all of humanity.
