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Philippe Petit


French
August 13, 1949
Celebrity
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Passion is the motto of all my actions.


Philippe Petit
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I am a wire-walker. I can walk any time, anywhere - I'm indestructible.


Philippe Petit
Tags: Time Any Am
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I did a walk in 1973 illegally in the northern side of the Sydney Harbor Bridge.


Philippe Petit
Tags: Did Side Walk
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There was a time when fire and story would fall asleep in unison. It was dream time.


Philippe Petit
Tags: Time Would Story
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I've been arrested many times for illegal high wire walking and illegal street performing.


Philippe Petit
Tags: Been Many Times
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It's very easy to walk on a wire if you spend a whole lifetime practicing for it.


Philippe Petit
Tags: You Very Whole
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There is a child inside me that wants to come out and do something to surprise all the adults.


Philippe Petit
Tags: Me Out Something
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I didn't go to school much. I was thrown out of different schools, and my university is the street.


Philippe Petit
Tags: Out Go Much
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In my life, I wanted to meet certain people. I never met Charlie Chaplin, but I met Werner Herzog.


Philippe Petit
Tags: People Life Never
I was thrown out of different schools because I was practicing my arts - magic, juggling, and the high wire.
Philippe Petit
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Every year, I am conscious of the anniversary of my 1974 World Trade Center walk.


Philippe Petit
I have been expelled from five different schools when I was a kid. And I learned basically all what I do by myself.
Philippe Petit
I rendezvous with the long wire and perform the 'torero walk', gliding my feet, holding the pole away from my body, head high.
Philippe Petit
Tags: Long Away High
I wanted all my life to give my world into other arts - books, plays, movies - but I didn't want to sell out.
Philippe Petit
Tags: Movies Out Life
On one day of the week, I relax - which is not true, I work furiously on other things. 'Relax' is not a word to me.
Philippe Petit
Tags: Work Me Things
To be able to create fully, it's maybe fine that you learn the rules, but you have to forget and to rebel against those rules.
Philippe Petit
Tags: You Those Able
I was not born into the world of the stuntman and the daredevil; I was born into the world of theater and writing and sculpting and classical music.
Philippe Petit
I started very early, from five or six years old, to climb. To climb trees, to climb rocks everywhere I could. At some point, of course, I used a rope.
Philippe Petit
Tags: Very Some Years
Right after my Twin Towers walk, I was approached by hundreds of people, and I said no to all the offers. I could have become a millionaire overnight, obviously, but I said no, and I continue to be uninterested.
Philippe Petit
It's very normal - when you're not used to the world of the high wire, it's very normal to be simply terrified. The reason I'm not is because I've done it for so many years.
Philippe Petit
Tags: You Because Very
You see, it's actually very good that a human activity is performed very close to death, because that's where life is. Life is, at its most valuable and most full, very close to the boundary of life.
Philippe Petit
Tags: Good Death You
When I was six years old, I fell in love with magic. For Christmas, I got a magic box and a very old book on card manipulation. Somehow, I was more interested in pure manipulation than in all the silly little tricks in the box.
Philippe Petit
I am fascinated by the engineering. The science of constructing and understanding why it stands. And I am drawn by the madness, the beauty, the theatricality, the poetry and soul of the wire. And you cannot be a wire-walker without mingling those two ways of seeing life.
Philippe Petit
Notre Dame and Sydney - that was nothing. Notre Dame doesn't have a police station; it is not 1,000 or so feet high. It was a public structure, very easy to access. And Sydney Harbour Bridge was half-and-half: a bridge, in the middle of the night. The World Trade Center was the end of the world. Electronic devices, police dogs.
Philippe Petit