Alejandro Jodorowsky > Quotes

“Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.”
― 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

“Most directors make films with their eyes; I make films with my testicles.”
― 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

“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

“Failure doesn't mean anything, it just means changing paths.”
― Alejandro Jodorowsky

“For a true artist, difficulties become opportunities and clouds become solid present.”
― Alejandro Jodorowsky

“El topo es un animal que cava galerías bajo la tierra buscando el sol y a veces su camino lo lleva a la superficie: cuando ve el sol, queda ciego.”
― Alejandro Jodorowsky

“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.”
― Alejandro Jodorowsky

“During a party, Luis Buñuel, seduced by Carrington’s beauty and emboldened by the notion that she had transcended all bourgeois morality, proposed (with his characteristic bluntness) that she become his mistress. Without even waiting for her answer, he gave her the key to the secret studio that he used as a love nest and told her to meet him at three o’clock the next afternoon. Early the next morning, Leonora went to visit the place alone. She found it tasteless: It looked exactly like a motel room. Taking advantage of the fact that she was in her menstrual period, she covered her hands with blood and used them to make bloody handprints all over the walls in order to provide a bit of decoration for that anonymous, impersonal room. Buñuel never spoke to her again.”
― Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky: The Creator of El Topo

“I don't live in France, I live in myself.”
― Alejandro Jodorowsky

“And I imagine... with great pleasure... all the horrible stirrings of the nonmanifested to bring forth the scream which creates the universe. Maybe one day I'll see you trembling, and you'll go into convulsion and grow larger and smaller until your mouth opens and the world will come from your mouth, escaping through the window like a river, and it will flood the city. And then we'll begin to live. ”
― Alejandro Jodorowsky

“If you are great, El Topo is a great picture. If you are limited, El Topo is limited.”
― Alejandro Jodorowsky

“el ave del espiritu debe liberarse de la jaula racional”
― Alejandro Jodorowsky, Psicomagia

“El amor es un intercambio de silencios.”
― Alejandro Jodorowsky

“... para que el hombre se haga luz, la mujer deberá enterrar su lámpara en las tinieblas"

Donde Mejor Canta un Pájaro”
― Alejandro Jodorowsky, Quando Teresa si arrabbiò con Dio

“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