Alejandro Jodorowsky Quotes & Sayings

When I'm tired, I see industrial pictures. But I'll see one every two months. If I see one every day, I'll become an idiot. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I don't want to just love my family; I want to love all of humanity. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Surrealism - in particular with Salvador Dali - was all about ego. It was all about extreme individualism. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

We are all working for the immortality of the human consciousness. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Books are finished. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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

Oh, Buenos Aires, I have traveled around the world, but I've never been separated from you," said Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges. And Saint Thomas said, "A friendship that can end has never been a true friendship." In — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Miracles are like stones: they are everywhere, offering up their beauty, but hardly anyone concedes value to them. We live in a reality where prodigies abound but are seen only by those who have developed their perception of them. Without this perception everything is banal, marvelous events are seen as chance, and one progresses through life without possessing the key that is gratitude. When something extraordinary happens it is seen as a natural phenomenon that we can exploit like parasites, without giving anything in return. But miracles require an exchange; I must make that which is given to me bear fruit for others. If one is not united with oneself, the wonder cannot be captured. Miracles are never performed or provoked: they are discovered. If someone who believes himself to be blind takes off his dark glasses, he will see the light. That darkness is the prison of the rational. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

For me they are no different, reality and dreams. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I tweet 15 times a day to keep my brain stimulated. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Psychoanalysis wants to heal with words and speaking, but sometimes with speaking, you realize nothing. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

During these past years, not being able to speak with you, I dedicated myself to reviewing, within myself, the sacred books I know by heart. I had the idea I should summarize them in a single volume. Then, in a single chapter, then in a single page, and finally in a single sentence. This sentence is the greatest thing I can teach you. It seems simple, but if you understand it, you will never have to study again." The Rabbi recited it. And life, from that moment on, changed for Alejandro. "If God is not here, He is nowhere; this instant itself is perfection. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I realized once again that what I believed myself to be was an arbitrary deformation, a rational mask floating in the infinite unexplored internal shadows. Later, I understood that diseases do not actually sicken us; they sicken what we believe ourselves to be. Health is achieved by overcoming prohibitions, quitting paths that are not right for us, ceasing to pursue imposed ideals, and becoming ourselves: the impersonal consciousness that does not define itself. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I was raping Frank Herbert but with love. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I am a poet; I am not a worker. I need to be free. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I am old, but I feel very beautiful. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Every work of art belongs to his time. I would not paint again the Mona Lisa in the third dimension. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Lady Gaga has a lot of energy, and that is fantastic, but she is using old surrealist images. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I never wanted to study art. And I don't think you need to study art if you are an artist. It's even dangerous to go to school. You need to do whatever you want, as you want. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I am like the rain: I go where I'm needed. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

For me 'Dune' was a dream - a big dream! — Alejandro Jodorowsky

What I am trying to do when I use symbols is to awaken in your unconscious some reaction. I am very conscious of what I am using because symbols can be very dangerous. When we use normal language we can defend ourselves because our society is a linguistic society, a semantic society. But when you start to speak, not with words, but only with images, the people cannot defend themselves. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

When I started to pay income tax, I was 50 years old. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Movies have heart. Have mind. Have power. Have ambition. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

The Arabs have a God, the Jews have another, and the Catholics have another! And they're all fighting to maintain that they worship the one real God. Idiots! — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I am not a man. I am not a human being inside. I am not that. I don't know what I am, but I am not that. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

The only thing a master can teach is how to learn about yourself. There are no secrets. They are only techniques to waken yourself. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

In order to be something, you must do something. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

We have to be very conscious of the fact that beneath every illness is a prohibition. A prohibition that comes from a superstition. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

We all exist in our own personal reality of craziness. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

The world is how we see the world. Some people see the world good, the other people see the world bad. Every person has an idea of the world with a subjective [viewpoint]. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Pretty soon we will no longer have movies. We will have television series only. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

This is true freedom: to be capable of leaving ourselves, crossing the boundaries of our little world to open up the universe. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

The mole is an animal that digs passages searching for the sun. Sometimes he reaches the surface. When he looks at the sun he goes blind. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

What is an artistic picture? An artistic picture is very simple. The creator is not the producer. The creator is not the star. The creator is the director, the person who realizes the picture, like a poet, like an artist. The creator of the picture is free to do whatever he wants, how he wants to do it. That is an artistic picture. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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

If you don't make errors, how can you be conscious? — Alejandro Jodorowsky

When my father died, I did not cry. When my cat died three days later, I cried a lot. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Every one of us is a perfect human being, deformed by the family, the society and the culture. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Scientific thought and the miraculous unconscious are two waves in the same ocean. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

If art is not a medicine for the society, it is a poison. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I liked Lady Gaga's meat dress. It was funny. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Five cats and a woman. That is all I need in life. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

God does not exist, God is not good. All that awaits us is the cat who will urinate on our grave. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

He who understands philosophy understands laughter. That mysterious Word at the beginning, mentioned in the Bible, is a divine guffaw. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

You are excrement. You can change yourself into gold. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

When the bull's-eye becomes as big in your mind as an elephant, you are sure to hit it. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

A person is not the same in his life at all times. Your consciousness is developing all the time. When I started making 'El Topo,' I was one person. When I finished that picture, I was another person. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

To have hands, to have fingers, is weird. Real life is weird, to have fingers? — Alejandro Jodorowsky

'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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

People say I am mad. I am not mad. I am trying to heal my soul. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I feel terrible for directors of TV because all the episodes have to look the same. They make a great series for five or six years, and then when it's canceled, they can't break out on their own. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

The worst grotesque situations: believing one knows oneself, believing one knows everything about some topic, believing one has judged with absolute impartiality, believing one will love and be loved forever. In conversation, people think one thing and, in trying to communicate it, say something else. The interlocutor hears one thing, but understands something different. When answering, one does not respond to what the other person initially thought, nor to what the other person said, but to what one has understood. The final result: a conversation between deaf people who do not even know how to listen to themselves. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Failure doesn't mean anything, it just means changing paths. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

One does not go to the theater to escape from himself, but to reestablish contact with the mystery that we all are. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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

If you are great, El Topo is a great picture. If you are limited, El Topo is limited. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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

When you put a great amount of energy and hope in a big project, you can be destroyed if you don't do it. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

You are engaging in madness. I feel obliged to accompany you. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I like Hollywood movies. I like them like I like to eat scrambled eggs; I like them for fun. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Accepting death is a massive problem for everybody. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

The worse the newspapers speak of the world, the better I feel. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I always think that art is a form of sacrifice. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Although really society should not change, it should mutate. And, little by little, it is mutating ...
... Society is like the body of a chicken: the chicken's foot is hard and insensitive while the eye is very alive. And there are beings who embody the cells of the eyes and others who embody the cells of the feet, of the wings, or of the anus. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

It's so weird to be alive and to be inside a body. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

My films are completely new. I am not similar to anybody in the history of movies. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Birds born in cages think that flying is a disease. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

All the pictures I could never do, I'll do it in comics. All the comics I do are the pictures I could never do. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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

If God gives you chocolate, you open your mouth, no? — Alejandro Jodorowsky

To be an artist, you need to play inside your work. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I want to show the world that it is possible. It's possible to remember your self. To open your mind. To open your heart. To open your creativity. To live with less, but to live well. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

My films are like clouds: their meaning keeps changing every minute. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

In Chile, they have no movies. They have awful popular movies. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

It's not enough to quote someone; it's important to specify what aspect of that person you're referencing. Every time we talk about someone, we speak of that person as if our perception is the same for everyone. When — Alejandro Jodorowsky

When I'm not creating something, I get bored; I despair. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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! — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Human society has dense borders - economic, religious and cultural - inculcated from an early age. We hate change. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Failure doesn't exist. It's only a change of direction. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Death is an art, you know. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

When the bullseye becomes as big as an elephant in your mind, you won't be able to miss it. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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

I wanted to be loved by my father. I could do anything to be loved by my father. — Alejandro Jodorowsky