A Quote by 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 have been expelled from five different schools when I was a kid. And I learned basically all what I do by myself.
The idea of social performance, that we're always performing identities, is something I got fairly obsessed with. I think it's probably because I am a person who went to 15 different elementary and middle schools. I moved all the time, often having to run out in the middle of the night because my mom couldn't pay the bills. There were schools where I'd be the poor loser kid. There were schools where I'd suddenly be the smart kid or the cool kid, although that was very seldom.
I've been at two different high schools, two different colleges, so I've learned some new playbooks, and that always helps me.
I usually describe myself as an engineer; that's basically what I've been doing since I was a kid.
I'm quite comfortable looking at myself in movies, probably because I've been doing it for so long, since I was a kid. So I sort of watched myself grow up and go through adolescence, like, basically on camera.
They [my sons] all went to different schools and all did different things. They're about as different for five kids as you'll ever see. They don't do anything the same.
I started rapping because my mom died when I was about 11 years old, and I was a very rebellious kid. I've been kicked out of every school I've ever been in since 6th grade on, expelled and dropped out in the 11th grade. Music was the only thing that I could really use to express myself, so I started rapping.
I had a lot of things I wanted to do... I want to be a teacher...I also want to be an astronaut...and also make my own cake shop...I want to go to the sweets bakery and say "I want one of everything", ohhhh I wish I could live life five times over...Then I'd be born in five different places, and I'd stuff myself with different food from around the world...I'd live five different lives with five different occupations...and then, for those five times...I'd fall in love with the same person.
For me, graffiti and the complexities with which it is either absorbed or expelled from what is going on, is a really good comparison to the way I see my work being similarly expelled or absorbed into different types of discourse.
The Obama administration doesn't see schools as a public good. It doesn't see schools as places where basically we can educate students in a way to take democracy seriously and to be able to fight for it. It sees them as basically kids who should be part of the global workforce.
To the credit of the Republican Party and the conservative movement, people have been expelled or marginalized. Pat Buchanan in the '90s. Ron Paul, Rand Paul in the first decade of this century. Bill Buckley famously expelled the Birchers in 1964. It's been a movement that's tried to maintain its boundaries.
I think I always told myself I would audition for the top musical theater schools, and if I didn't get into one of my top five schools, that would be my sign.
I was expelled from four schools. Today I still read with difficulty.
A real good artist is basically a grown-up kid, who never kills the kid. What we call being an adult is basically about killing the kid. People think you have to forget about the kid to become an adult and deal with grown-up problems. But, that's bullshit. We are still kids. It's the same, you just grow up. You're a kid with more experience.
What's fascinating to me is that in rich-kid schools, it's better to be gay. No one is discriminated against because they're gay in a rich-kid school. But in poor-kid schools, it's often not the same. So being gay is a class issue now.
You [ Peter R. Breggin] have basically implied that they've turned our schools into something other than schools. What do you think the government has in mind by turning our schools into little clinics?
I had run away from home three times. I had been kicked out of three different schools under different circumstances. I was kicked out of everything that I didn't quit. Kicked out of schools. Kicked out of summer camp, the Boy Scouts, the altar boys, the choir, and something else that I can't think of, that I'm proud of. Anyway, that was my pattern. I just began to invent myself early in life, and went out and did something about it.
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