Alejandro Quotes & Sayings

I have never directed anything for the stage. I studied for three years in the theater, and it was a very, very scary experience to direct live, being so vulnerable without the possibility to control things, to be so exposed. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

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 think I want to talk about life from the point of view of death. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

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

Cinema is universal, beyond flags and borders and passports. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

I don't believe in failing. I have dignity. — 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

I hate superficial violence. It's shallow and stupid, and the impact on the audience is really bad. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Books are finished. — 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

I think the art of filmmaking is something you learn through actions, by doing it, not by learning theories. And as you do it, your mind starts to change. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

My country has been wracked with violence for a long time. Just to see all the violence on the news makes you sick. It's true that violence is in our nature, but I try to explore deeply where it comes from and where it goes and what it creates. Not in a moralistic or preachy way, but just to observe the real consequences of violence in a human being or in a society. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Antonio Sanchez is from Mexico City. I met him at a Pat Metheny concert. He did a solo, and I thought, 'This is an octopus man!' — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

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

In hotels, every time I make a reservation and they never find my name, they never can pronounce it; it's so long, and sometimes they confuse. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

As an explanation tool, the concept of class serves, first and foremost, to clarify who gains and who losses from specific economic processes and policies and with what consequences. — Alejandro Portes

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

What's the purpose of being with someone if they don't change your life? She said that, and Julio was present when she said it: that life only had purpose if you found someone who changed it, who destroyed your life. — Alejandro Zambra

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

That incredible bubble and high expectations built at festivals can work against a film. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Great leap forwards in mankind do not take place because of the economic values we place on them. They happen because we strive to do better and to be better. The sooner we break away from the 'if it makes money it must be good' mentality the better off we all shall be. — David Alejandro Fearnhead

Perhaps the greatest illusion a writer ever creates is that his work is achieved without great effort or sacrifice. — David Alejandro Fearnhead

I was raping Frank Herbert but with love. — 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

But any idiot can see you two are gaga for one another.
As in Lady Gaga? Because I do enjoy riding Wade's disco stick and playing our own version of poker face. And even though I'm terrified we'll wind up having a bad romance, leaving me to just dance while watching Wade ride off into the sunset with Alejandro as the paparazzi followed in a frenzy, I can't seem to stop myself from loving him.
I shook the nonsense out of my head. — Ethan Day

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

Life really comes down to two problems. You are either drinking too much or you are not drinking enough. — David Alejandro Fearnhead

I am an honest artist. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I was brought up Christian, then I was agnostic and then I realized I was atheist ... This movie [Agora] is about fundamentalism and hate. — Alejandro Amenabar

I think bad movies are made around the world, not just in Hollywood. There are as many bad art films in the whole world as there are bad commercial films. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

I think every beautiful tale in the world hides the truth and reveals it little by little. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

For me, it's not about masochism to talk about death. For me, it's about observing life through death, from the last point of it. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

People talk about the pain of defeat, but I think defeat has a lot of value. I think the wound of victory can be even more damaging than defeat. Very few people really know how to win. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

How can [actors] learn their lines and be honest in front of 30 people and all the lights? It makes me cry sometimes. I can't understand how they can be joking with me 30 seconds before, and 40 seconds later they're giving me all this incredible feeling. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

'Biutiful' is a tough film. It doesn't make concessions to the vulgarity of light entertainment. It's not the kind of film that you see every day in the Cineplex. But as an artist, it's the thing that I needed to do. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Life and death are illusions. We are in a constant state of transformation. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

I really didn't want to become branded as 'that multistructural guy.' — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

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

The tarot is sacred. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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

We are the only alive creatures that are mortals; the animals are immortal, which is why they live stupidly. We are the only creatures that know that we will die, but that is a gift. It's important because we know we have to take advantage and squeeze life and understand why we're here in the first place. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

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

I think that in order to be a film director, one has to be a warrior who shouldn't be defeated by the daily onslaught of problems. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

I can't understand the conditions of a corporate product being designed and getting millions. I admire it, it's great, but I don't know how to do that. I have to have the wheel. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Don't forget to put wax in your ears; we are going to hunt poets', — Alejandro Cordoba Sosa

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

I am not a depressive person at all, but I reflect a lot on my life, and life in general, from the perspective of death. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

George Harrison wanted to play the thief in 'Holy Mountain.' — Alejandro Jodorowsky

I saw what I could [in Mexico City], but we rarely got anything other than big, mainstream American films. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

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. — 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

One of the reasons why I agreed to do commercials is that they gave me complete freedom. I just had to have the car in it and write a story around it. I wanted to do something serious set in a Latin American country, but again, it was an exercise in style for me. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

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

In families you can find the source of every human drama. It is interesting because the cell of a society, the cell of a country, the cell of humanity - everything lies in the family. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

I'm an intense person. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

For my first movie, I think my first cut was like three hours, because when you first direct a movie, you want to keep everything. But I'm not one of those directors who falls in love with the stuff they've done. Already when I'm doing my first cut, I'm willing to cut out everything that is necessary. — Alejandro Amenabar

I remember, the first time I saw a [Andrei] Tarkovsky film, I was shocked by it. I didn't know what to do. I was fascinated, because suddenly I realized that film could have so many more layers to it than what I had imagined before. Then others, like Kurosawa and Fellini, were like a new discovery for me, another country. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

How long do you think it will take her to figure out who you are?" "She is blind." "Then that makes two of you." Alejandro — Lorraine Heath

'Russian Ark,' I adore - I almost cried at the end of that film, it's so beautiful. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

And just so you know for the future, I like my double-chocolate chip cookies warm and soft in the middle ... and without magnets glued to them."
"Me, too. When you decide to bake me some, let me know. — Simone Elkeles

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

My cinema is an extension of myself. A sort of life-testimony of my vital experience, with my few virtues and my numerous limitations. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Society feeds terror and is in turn terrorized; we are afraid to lose, so we consume. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

My movies, in general, I have the impression that when they finish of course they're never originally what you had in mind. — Alejandro Amenabar

When Lucifer's arrogance turns to righteousness, the Angels will reunite and the heavens will no longer be fragmented or lost in space. — Alejandro C. Estrada

Writing is not an unknown territory for me. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

A society that is controlled by an elite minority group who use the population as a food source, will never know civility — Alejandro C. Estrada

'21 Grams' is only one story told by three different points of view, but they are really physically connected - literally, with the heart. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

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

Of course, there's always one theater that shows some kind of European film. Now, fortunately, you have DVDs, so it's possible to get anything you want within a few hours. In those days, it was virtually impossible to get Italian films, or German films, or whatever. So I grew up with very standard, mainstream films. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

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

Ultimately, with every film I'd done before, there was a reference. They have their own uniqueness, but there was always a precedent. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

She lay on the bed to read a novel; she wanted to forget that bitter conversation and be carried along by the plot, but it was impossible, because the book was about parents who abandoned their children or children who abandoned their parents. Ultimately, that's what all books are about, she thought. — Alejandro Zambra

Blessed is he who can call his family friends and his friends family. — David Alejandro Fearnhead

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

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

I know how to work with people. I've worked with the same people for 10 years. I'm not that kind of auteur. I hear ideas. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

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. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Who cares about my opinions? — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

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

What could be the utopia for the present age?
To begin with, I would want all of human order to make a partnership, beginning in schools. It is atrocious that the children leave the partnership and go to be educated by a professor, just a man or a woman. This negates partnership. Classes should be taught by couples of both sexes, and children should be educated by a man and a woman ...
... not necessarily a husband and wife. This is what I would do as a first political measure to improve social life: all human activities would have to be carried out in complimentary pairs. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Cannes or any other major festival is basically an animal in its own nature, creating very specific perceptions of films in a moment. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

I respect BMW for not interfering in these projects. They're just trying to support short films with their brand, which I think is great. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

The way films establish the order of scenes is very artificial. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

To direct actors is difficult. To direct actors in another language is more difficult, but directing non-actors in another language is one of the craziest things that I have done and one of the most rewarding experiences I have had. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

I think movies in general should have more respect for the audience than they do. Too many films are afraid to confuse people, so all the information is given to them right away, and there's nothing left for the film to do. It ruins many stories, because everything becomes obvious and predictable. I want my films to engage people more and make them more actively involved in the story. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

I always have considered Michael Keaton to be a phenomenal actor because he navigates drama and comedy. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

An Oscar means a lot of things because it's like the ultimate award for a filmmaker so it feels great. But I think you have to consider awards with some distance and not get obsessed with it. When you're creating you shouldn't think about it. — Alejandro Amenabar

Do not become attached to anything that can destroy you in the course of time. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

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

At a very young age, I was influenced enormously by Julio Cortazar or Carlos Fuentes. In that literature, there's always an exploration of different perspectives, points of view. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

My mother used to take my brother and me to get any books we wanted, but they were second hand books published in the '30s and '40s. I liked scary books. — Alejandro Amenabar

Innocence can be more powerful than experience. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Do you know the phrase, 'The word 'water' will not wet you?' It's one thing to write down an idea and another thing entirely to execute it. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

When I was about to turn 50, I went into a kind of personal revision and observed my own priorities and what led those priorities in my life. And many things that, in a way, were profound. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu