Metaphorically speaking, of course, if I put a problem behind my pillow and fall asleep, very often because my brain went to sleep with that idea or the problem alive, very often in the middle of the night I wake up, and I wake up with a solution or with a direction of solution.
— Philippe Petit
I didn't go to school much. I was thrown out of different schools, and my university is the street.
I, like everybody else, have a certain fear of heights, and I have to be very careful when I am in the clouds, but it is also what I love; it is my domain, so when you love something, you don't have fear.
It's always easy to describe something complex by applying to it an already known label.
As a high wire walker, I do not allow myself to 'leave the wire' during a performance.
If you see how carefully I prepare for any kind of walk, legal or illegal, small or big, you will see that, actually, I narrow the unknown to virtually nothing. And that's when I am ready to walk on the wire.
It would be very, very dangerous for a wire walker to experience fear while he is balancing on the wire. Fear has its place on earth, before and maybe after a high-wire walk, but not during for me.
I'm a wire-walker, but actually, I'm a moviemaker that hasn't done his first movie.
Fame was never something I was seeking in my artistic journey. It's to be used as a tool for an artist to break open doors and keep creating. That's how I enjoyed fame in '74; it was not just for the emptiness of being famous.
Talking about theater, actually, I built a little barn in upstate New York, and I call it 'the smallest theater in the world,' but it has a mini stage and a red velvet curtain.
If I had been born in the circus, my parents would have pushed me on that little high wire at four years old. That's when the body is most limber to learn those acrobatics.
If I see three oranges, I have to juggle. And if I see two towers, I have to walk.
I am a wire-walker. I can walk any time, anywhere - I'm indestructible.
My time is always divided when I prepare for a wire walk. First I dream, technically and artistically, and then I go to work, and I am the master rigger, climbing trees and ladders and constructing. Only then I change my cap and become the performer.
For years, I have been working on crossing the Grand Canyon. Actually, there is nobody who says 'no,' but since this is a project that comes from me and not a commission, I have to find the money, plan the logistics, etcetera.
Art is maybe a subversive activity. There is a certain rebellion when you are an artist at heart, even if only in the art of living.
I 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.
This moment where we think we rest, when the brain is floating, you know, in sleep, is actually a moment where I could be very creative in a very strange, uncontrolled way.
I wanted all my life to give my world into other arts - books, plays, movies - but I didn't want to sell out.
My first walk illegally at 20 years old was between the towers of Notre Dame.
I am not up there by chance. I am there by choice. And I know the wire. And I know my limits. And I am a madman of details.
My parents wanted me to have an honorable profession and not to be a jester.
It is very normal for people on the ground to look at somebody apparently walking in midair and thinking first that person is crazy and thinking secondly that person risks his or her life.
You see, it's actually very good that a human activity is performed very close to death, because that's where life is. Life is, at its most valuable and most full, very close to the boundary of life.
I was not born into the world of the stuntman and the daredevil; I was born into the world of theater and writing and sculpting and classical music.
I would like to continue to tell stories of what I did in a biographical way, so I will continue to write.
I walk on the wire; it's my profession, and there are no two high wire walks alike.
Obsessed people are not humorless at all.
Wire-walking in performance is one thing - I never fell, of course. If I had, I wouldn't be here talking about it.
Notre Dame and Sydney - that was nothing. Notre Dame doesn't have a police station; it is not 1,000 or so feet high. It was a public structure, very easy to access. And Sydney Harbour Bridge was half-and-half: a bridge, in the middle of the night. The World Trade Center was the end of the world. Electronic devices, police dogs.
I will never fall prey to celebrity because I am too busy. I have other things to do than look at myself in the mirror.
If I have to make a self-portrait, I would put poetry and rebellion on the list. To be able to walk on a wire, to be able to juggle six hoops, you need focus, another word for tenacity, which is passion.
It is treacherous on a high wire to change your focus point and suddenly look down.
Many people use the words 'death defying' or 'death wishing' when they talk about wire-walking. Many people have asked me: 'So do you have a death wish?' After doing a beautiful walk, I feel like punching them in the nose. It's indecent. I have a life wish.
I am a thief of knowledge, and in a survival way, I had to solve all the problems around me.
I am the poet of the high wire - I never do stunts; I do theatrical performances.
I focus, I invent, I transform, I challenge, I attempt, I observe, I perform.
On a very long and very high wire, I will not hope to not be blown off by high winds. I will have the certitude that such could not happen.
Of course, the slightest little mistake on the wire will deprive me of my life, so in that sense, yes, it is a dangerous profession. You have to pay attention; if not, you will lose your life.
If I am practicing on the wire, and you pushed me, I would not move, and if you take a piece of wood and beat me up on the shoulder and the head, I would not move. You would not put me out of balance. You would not be able to. I am solid as granite when I am on the tight rope, and I should be.
When I was learning by myself, despite my parents, despite my teachers, despite society, when I was fighting for building my life as a young wire walker at age 16, I didn't have feelings, I had certainties.
I've frowned at the idea of breaking records, the first one to do something, or do it longer, higher, more difficult.
Certainly, in the story of my life, the walk between the Twin Towers was one of the grandest, one of the most memorable, but not solely the grandest and the most memorable.
When art in general, and film in particular, succeeds is when it pulls you away onto a voyage. Then it's a good film.
In my life, I wanted to meet certain people. I never met Charlie Chaplin, but I met Werner Herzog.
I rendezvous with the long wire and perform the 'torero walk', gliding my feet, holding the pole away from my body, head high.
I was born in a world of opera, theatre, films, poetry, art, and therefore, out of the wire, I made a stage. That's why they call me a high wire artist.
When you are a young person, the world is yours. You can do the impossible.
I would not describe my personality. And I think when you describe people, you are making a mistake. That's not how they are; that's how you perceive them at that moment. It's limiting in front of something that is magnificent and unlimited: life.
It's part of my life to feel like a criminal, to have eyes in my back and see if I'm being followed. It's a feeling that comes from street juggling because I have been arrested so many times.
