A biography for Alejandro Jodorowskyhasn’t been written yet.
“Every person, every artist makes his life an artwork.”
“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.”
“You are engaging in madness. I feel obliged to accompany you.”
“Death is an art, you know.”
“Birds born in cages think that flying is a disease.”
“Every work of art belongs to his time. I would not paint again the Mona Lisa in the third dimension.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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 am like the rain: I go where I'm needed.”
“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.”
“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.”
“We all exist in our own personal reality of craziness.”
“Society feeds terror and is in turn terrorized; we are afraid to lose, so we consume.”
“This is true freedom: to be capable of leaving ourselves, crossing the boundaries of our little world to open up the universe.”
“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.”
“'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.”
“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.”
“I am an honest artist.”
“I wanted to be loved by my father. I could do anything to be loved by my father.”