Philippe Petit Quotes

I started walking a wire when I was 2 years old, and this has been a dream of mine to recreate this walk.

What I'm doing is a natural wonder. If not, there'd be 150 people behind me on the wire.

I walk on the wire; it's my profession, and there are no two high wire walks alike.

You don't have to be someone who likes walking a tightrope across the Twin Towers to watch 'Man On Wire.'

I've been arrested many times for illegal high wire walking and illegal street performing.

The thing that's interesting about wire walking is that we never get to see it other than looking up. It's like a circus thing. It's a guy on a wire.

Many people use the words 'death defying' or 'death wishing' when they talk about wire-walking. Many people have asked me: 'So do you have a death wish?' After doing a beautiful walk, I feel like punching them in the nose. It's indecent. I have a life wish.

You know how the tightrope guy at the circus wants everyone to believe his act is an art, but deep down you can see that he's really just hoping he makes it all the way across?

My life has been being a daredevil. I am Evel Knievel. I am a daredevil.

I should have been a stuntwoman.

I jumped 18 cars on a motorcycle, so I did almost everything.

Just as most of us prefer to watch a trapeze artist work without a net, we like to be absolutely sure that a virtuoso is giving us our money's worth, and a seemingly effortless performance, no matter how spectacular it may be, deprives us of that slightly sadistic thrill.

I'm riveted by extreme sports like big-wave surfing, 'megaramp' skateboarding and half-pipe snowboarding. I'm fascinated partly because the sports are so exhilaratingly acrobatic. But I'm also captivated by the fear that a terrible accident might happen at any moment. And accidents do happen.

I am the poet of the high wire - I never do stunts; I do theatrical performances.

I saw a human pyramid once. It was very unnecessary.

One thing I got to do that was awesome was hang off the side of this Ferris wheel and do that stunt myself.

Nik Wallenda and his family are legendary.

I walked on a high wire at Battersea power station for Comic Relief in 2011. It was the scariest but the most exciting moment. I hated being on it but as soon as I stepped off I was desperate to get back on and do it again!

All day I wait for my job, which I do at night, and once I get there, I walk a tightrope, jump through hoops, and take breathtaking dives.

I could jump out of this window feet first, which would be the safe way. But the way I'd do it would be to use a ramp, get a running start, dive through head first and maybe throw in a little roll at the end. Doing it that way makes it more spectacular.

Stunts are my favourite - I love it: the feeling, the adrenaline when all the cameras are rolling and everyone is watching and crowd round.

I knew, as everyone knows, that the easiest way to attract a crowd is to let it be known that at a given time and a given place some one is going to attempt something that in the event of failure will mean sudden death. That's what attracts us to the man who paints the flagstaff on the tall building, or to the 'human fly' who scales the walls of the same building.

I came up with the idea of a daredevil who's going to go upside down, in a metal car, at 90 mph, and it's never been done before. I get into this metal car, I'm strapped in. You pull back, and it's a roller coaster at Magic Mountain, with kids and nuns and everything else! I pass out while everybody else is having a wonderful time.

So much about getting onstage is creating a connection with an audience that allows you to go different places and try different things.

It's the weird thing that actors do: You jumped across that building because the scene required it.