Every one of us is a perfect human being, deformed by the family, the society and the culture.
Alejandro Jodorowsky
Birds born in cages think that flying is a disease.
I am like the rain: I go where I'm needed.
You live in the image you have of the world. Every one of us lives in a different world, with different space and different time.
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.
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.
People say I am mad. I am not mad. I am trying to heal my soul.
We all exist in our own personal reality of craziness.
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.
My films are like clouds: their meaning keeps changing every minute.
Life is beautiful, what do you think? In the morning I say, 'Ah, I am alive still!' All my friends die already. I am alive. It is fantastic.
Failure doesn't exist. It's only a change of direction.
When I brought 'El Topo' to New York, no one understood the picture. But John Lennon understood. John and Yoko Ono, they presented 'El Topo' in the United States; they introduced it.
'Santa Sangre' is the picture I love the best, myself, because 'El Topo' and 'The Holy Mountain' I made with my head, and 'Santa Sangre' I made with my feelings, with my heart. It's an emotional picture. And it's more real for me, that picture.
For me they are no different, reality and dreams.
When I was an adolescent, I abandoned my country at 23 years to come to Paris to know Andre Breton, the 'Pope of Surrealism.' And for three years, I was there working with him being a surrealist.
I've seen 'Hamlet' many times, and Hamlet, he was just a hideous neurotic; he never changes. He doubts - all the way to the end, all the way until when he dies, he doubts.
Maybe I am a prophet. I really hope one day there will come Confucius, Muhammad, Buddha and Christ to see me. And we will sit at a table, taking tea and eating some brownies.
In order to be something, you must do something.
I had a big problem working with stars, because they are too expensive and have too many demands. Their names help you raise the money to make the movie, but then they demand close-ups. They change things. You end up doing things at their service instead of servicing the film.
The tarot is sacred.
My father was an atheist, absent. He was a salesman; I was four years old when he told me that the end of life was death.
In Mexico, when we want to speak deep secrets, we drink pulgue together. It is a drink made from the cactus plant, and when you take the bottle from your mouth, it leaves a string behind, between the mouth and the bottle, like a spider's web. It shows that the truth sticks inside.
I am not like Hitchcock, directing the reaction of the public or the audience. I don't like that. I think this is some kind of fascism - 'You need to react like that.' No. No. It's not like this; everyone needs to react as he can.
Psychoanalysis wants to heal with words and speaking, but sometimes with speaking, you realize nothing.
I tweet 15 times a day to keep my brain stimulated.
Revolutions are of no us;, it is necessary to work on transforming the brain: on sowing a different knowledge/awareness, on creating a new conscience, that is like a magic box full of brains.
I want to liberate my imagination and my mind with every kind of movie. That is what I wanted to do all my life.
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.
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.
We are all working for the immortality of the human consciousness.
Tarantino's 'Django' amused me very much. It is as made by an adult that was still a child.
I was alone as a child. I lived in fairytales, adventures, Shakespeare. They are the friends, my books.
George Harrison wanted to play the thief in 'Holy Mountain.'
Accepting death is a massive problem for everybody.
When my father died, I did not cry. When my cat died three days later, I cried a lot.
Lady Gaga has a lot of energy, and that is fantastic, but she is using old surrealist images.
I hated Peter O'Toole. I wanted to kill that guy! When they said he was dead, I was happy. People said, 'Poor Peter O'Toole.' I was happy!
I liked Lady Gaga's meat dress. It was funny.
For me, surrealism is in my blood; it's not an effort.
If you are great, 'El Topo' is a great picture. If you are limited, 'El Topo' is limited.
My ideal audience is on the young side, eager to mutate and move to a higher level of consciousness. I want my images to turn the viewer's brain into what it is: a flying carpet.
We only have problems we really want to have.
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!'
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.
Surrealism was necessary - essential, even - in the 1920s to bridge the gap between rationalism and the subconscious. It started something important. But by the early '60s, it had become petit-bourgeois; it was too intellectual and romantic, and had ground to a halt. It had become respectable.
My second wife, the mother of one of my sons, died of murder. I was not with her, but I could have saved her. I think.
My wife is 37 years younger than me. I don't feel the difference.
A man doesn't cry. In my life, I've never cried. I cannot do it. I am a man. How will I cry?
One day I was sitting in my own pain, and suddenly all the pain and troubles of the world came to me. I received all the pain of the world, all through my body.
