Alejandro Jodorowsky's Quotes

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

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

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.

A man doesn't cry. In my life, I've never cried. I cannot do it. I am a man. How will I cry?

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

I am not a commercial industry creator. I don't believe in making art to make money.

I don't live in France; I live in myself.

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

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.

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

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

My consciousness is without limits more than when I was 40 or 50.

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

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

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.