Werner Herzog Quotes

There is a fascination about crime, which is understandable, but hardly anyone talks about the families of victims of violent crime and the devastation that is beyond the victim alone.

It seems odd, but people who see my films normally take them in in a deeper way than you would actually watch a film, let's say The Terminator or whatever.

There's this kind of strange mythology about me in the media because I've done unusual things.

Of course the entire planet Earth consists of magma under us, and only the very inner-core is different.

There's happens to be a volcano in the vicinity and there's some talk about a volcano as well, so that's the title Salt and Fire

You have to be completely open to what people would tell you. You do not shape them; you do not force the materials into your ideas. You have to have all windows and doors open.

As for the "anger" of the volcano, we leave it up to the local populations who create their demons, their gods and their divine punishment.

It's not far-fetched that almost everywhere in the world where you have volcanoes you have mythologies or new gods being created.

I wouldn't like to travel at all. I've been too much around.

I'm not a one-trick horse.

The universe is not harmonious: you know that by looking outside.

I think I'm a prudent filmmaker.

If you do not understand how finances are functioning, you are in a very precarious situation, at least concerning long-term survival.

For me, the distinction between documentaries and feature films is not so clear - my "documentaries" were largely scripted, rehearsed, and repeated, and have a lot of fantasy and concoction in them.

Everything that I've done was prudent and never has anyone gotten hurt in my films - not a single actor, not a single extra, ever.

Of course I do things in my voice in my commentary, which I wrote.

Everything you see in North Korea, it's all propaganda, but it's all connected to the volcano.

I think I would be a good villain in a James Bond movie. They were fairly weak, the last half-dozen of villains in James Bond movies were not that convincing.

I work very fast and steadily, and I don't hardly ever notice that I'm working. It feels like just breathing or walking when I do films.

There is never an excuse not to finish a film.

It's all movies for me. And besides, when you say documentaries, in my case, in most of these cases, means "feature film" in disguise.

I always felt completely confident - it's like in a feature film, knowing your principle character is extremely well-cast. I had that same confidence in Clive [Oppenheimer].

I'm not a journalist; I'm a poet. I had a discourse, an encounter with these people but I never had a list of questions.

I live my life outside of the glitz and glamour of the red carpet events, and so you’ll never see me there. I’m never at parties.

North Korea has a very striking mythology there. It is influencing the whole nation.

I don't see poetry as something that has to do with too much emotion anyway. It has to do with language.

I know whenever it comes to be really dysfunctional and vile and base and hostile on screen, I'm good at that.

Of course subjects are changing, and since I started so early in filmmaking, I did my first film at age 19, of course you grow up with your films and you are not trotting the same path all the time.

I have nothing against 3D films but I do not need to see them.

Roger Ebert was the last mammoth alive who was holding the flag for real movies and moviemakers.

My contacts with the film industry can be described in very simple terms: The industry does not really need me, and I do not really need the industry.

We are surrounded by worn-out, banal, useless and exhausted images, limping and dragging themselves behind the rest of our cultural evolution.

Women have a very good sense for seeing instantly what constitutes a good man. Not physically. The physical strength is only a small side of it.

I prefer the material woman.

I'm not a citizen of America, I cannot vote. But it is fascinating because there's a new kind of protagonist out there that we didn't expect. By the way, I'm not in any panic at all.

After "Jack Reacher" the parts I didn't like, most of it was silly.

I do have a clear vision, and I do see things that are existing in my quote-unquote spirit, but that doesn't necessary make me a very spiritual person.

I know what I'm talking about and I've never been over budget, in 70 films.

We are not accountants, We are not accountants who do number after number after number of storyboard images, a robot could do it ultimately, but what I'm doing a robot cannot do.

It doesn't matter whether you shoot on celluloid or on digital, you better make a good film.

James Joyce is a cul-de-sac. [Ulysses is] ... an example how literature branched out and went into, lost itself in nowhere, no man's land.

The danger is to stupidly believe that depicting facts gives us much insight. If facts were the only thing that counted, the telephone directory would be the book of books.

It happens sometimes that the material itself carries things you have not fully planned. The footage has its own right, its own life, its own vibrancy and energy in it.

The punishment itself is something I respectfully disagree with, but for thousands and thousands of years it was practiced everywhere.

Only the poets can hold the country together, and I wanted to hold Germany together.

I have a great map of the Tibesti Mountains in the southern Sahara or Northern Chad. It's a dream of mine to go there, but it's such a volatile area, you have to be prudent.

There are specific times where film noir is a natural concomitant of the mood. When there's insecurity, collapse of financial systems - that's where film noir always hits fertile ground.

I'm quite convinced that cooking is the only alternative to film making. Maybe there's also another alternative, that's walking on foot.

By the way, today with digital cameras and editing on your laptop, and things like that, you can make a feature film, a narrative feature film easily for $10,000.

When I film, there are no emotions. That would be the last thing.