Alejandro Jodorowsky
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.Collection: Religion
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.Collection: Time
I like Hollywood movies. I like them like I like to eat scrambled eggs; I like them for fun.Collection: Movies
Failure doesn't exist. It's only a change of direction.Collection: Failure
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.Collection: Morning
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.Collection: Romantic
Every one of us is a perfect human being, deformed by the family, the society and the culture.Collection: Society
For me they are no different, reality and dreams.Collection: Dreams
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.Collection: Hope
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.Collection: Poetry
Accepting death is a massive problem for everybody.Collection: Death
I am like the rain: I go where I'm needed.
The tarot is sacred.
Birds born in cages think that flying is a disease.
Tarantino's 'Django' amused me very much. It is as made by an adult that was still a child.
We all exist in our own personal reality of craziness.
I don't want to just love my family; I want to love all of humanity.
I am like a woman. I have a woman inside me.
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.
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 not a normal person. I am living in a normal body, but my mind is not normal.
If God gives you chocolate, you open your mouth, no?
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.
In history, psychedelic plants were used by priests and shamans with a desire to discover the interior.
Death is an art, you know.
We are all working for the immortality of the human consciousness.
I grew up in the north of Chile, and this is why there are a lot of religious symbols in my pictures: because the Catholic Church in Latin America is very strong.
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.
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.
When my father died, I did not cry. When my cat died three days later, I cried a lot.
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.
I don't believe in failing. I have dignity.
Life is a mixing of all kind of things: comedy and tragedy going together.
A man doesn't cry. In my life, I've never cried. I cannot do it. I am a man. How will I cry?
'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 'Dune' was a dream - a big dream!
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.
You dream every night. Every person in the world, even if they don't remember, is dreaming every night.
I always think that art is a form of sacrifice.
I am old, but I feel very beautiful.
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.
To have hands, to have fingers, is weird. Real life is weird, to have fingers?
I don't live in France; I live in myself.
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.
Scientific thought and the miraculous unconscious are two waves in the same ocean.
I was alone as a child. I lived in fairytales, adventures, Shakespeare. They are the friends, my books.
When I'm not creating something, I get bored; I despair.
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!
A true artist is always out of his time.
I felt so alone as a boy because no one wanted to be friends with me.