Philippe Petit Quotes

I still get scared every time I go out. I get scared taking off; I get scared on the wave, falling, everything. But, you know, growing up with it, I guess you're a little more comfortable.

Auditioning for something you already know and love is terrifying.

If someone's got a fear of heights, they'd probably say, well, hanging off a helicopter at 3,000 feet above downtown L.A. would be the scariest. For me, that's a day's work, something I was very happy to do.

When I first played live, I would shake with fear, and my voice would tremble. But I do it for the love of it. There's nothing I love more than playing live.

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.

I play the game for the love that's in my heart, and as long as that's still there, I can go out there with nothing to fear.

Fear is the strong passion; it is with fear that you must trifle, if you wish to taste the intensest joys of living.

Am I nervous? Yeah. Am I scared? Sure. But I do this because I love it.

They put me in a harness, like a horse, to learn the back somersault. It was weird up there when I put on that harness for the first time. The courage came with practice.

I think to be courageous, you have to be afraid. For me, it feels very courageous when I go skiing because I'm very, very afraid to ski. It's dangerous! I feel very scared. But when I'm acting, I don't feel very scared.

A lot of the physical flirtation with fear I did early on in my career, when I was a much younger person - stuff I wouldn't do now. But I was very interested in the mechanics of risk and fear in those days. And I found out fear pretty much always feels the same, whether it's doing a rock climb or speaking in front of an audience.

His advice to me is basically to just love what you do and don't let the fear of failure stop you.

Whenever we're afraid, it's because we don't know enough. If we understood enough, we would never be afraid.

For the timid, change is frightening; for the comfortable, change is threatening; but for the confident, change is opportunity.

Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.

Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.

I'd love to do a comedy. I'm terrified of comedy. I don't think I'm funny, but I guess that's why it's so thrilling.

I used to make my manager Jamie not tell me where I was going to be the next day, because I was so afraid of flying and of anything. But now I love flying, I love working hard, I love being around the world.

I don't run away from a challenge because I am afraid. Instead, I run toward it because the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your feet.

You just have to get rid of fear and confront the world. Look at yourself in the mirror and say to yourself, 'I love you and nothing will destroy you and you're not going to fall.'

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

I was terrified of vault, like literally I hated it. I had a fear of running as fast as I could at a solid object, which is I think a normal fear to have because nobody would really want to do that. Once I got over the fear of running into the table I just kind of relaxed and now it's like autopilot. I love it.

I'm writing a poem right now about a nose. I've always wanted to write a poem about a nose. But it's a ludicrous subject. That's why, when I was younger, I was afraid of something that didn't make a lot of sense. But now I'm not. I have nothing to worry about. It doesn't matter.

I absolutely love writing about the things that scare me, the things that keep me up at night. I don't quite know why. Perhaps because so many things do scare me, and this is my subconscious way of trying to exercise some control over things that go bump in the night!

I'm a relatively shy person, but I love being challenged and putting myself in positions that are scary.