Confessions of an Outlaw: The Self You Bring, with Philippe Petit | Big Think.

Many people come to me and they say how courageous they see me. Very often, uh, maybe in a shocking way, I said, but I don't find myself courageous. I find myself passionate, and I love what I do. If I love what I do, I'm going to do it all day long. If I do it all day long, I probably will be very good at it soon. That's the story of my life.

I started; I was not born in the circus, for example, where the wire walkers are. So, I learned by myself as I was learning all my arts: magic, juggling, the high wire, writing books, making films. All those things I realized, maybe by looking at performers and also by becoming one, that the most powerful way to inspire people, to touch an audience, is not to try to touch them; it is to be yourself.

If you write a novel for what the people want to read, well, you're a writer that I will be uninterested in. But if you write because you are devoured inside by a fire, and then you need to write, or the painter needs to paint, then your work will be interesting. Actually, some people might hate it or might love it, which actually are distant cousins. It's much more interesting than people who say, "Oh, I don't remember that work of art," but you will cause a human response much more rich than if you try to please.

If you try to, you know, in performance, in show business—and I hate that term—you see people on stage, a juggler, a magician. They try to make the people love; they try to make them applaud. By doing that, they take away from their arts. You have to find your own personality, your own style. It takes sometimes a lifetime, or you can copy people, and that's, you know, an artistic crime. But to go the easy way and to try to be a crowd pleaser, at a very young age in my life, I realized that was a form of artistic jittery.