Werner Herzog Quotations | Page 2

The beauty of Netflix is on the 28th of October they push a button and the film will be in 190 countries at the same moment in 17 languages.

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

I do not recall to [Kim Jong-un], but it was complex. "Dear young leader of the people and chairman of the joint military commission" or something like that.

I had complete freedom. They [Netflix] knew roughly what I was doing.

I don't dabble, I'm good at acting.

If the part is really good of course I would like to do it.

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

I think I would be a good villain in a James Bond movie.

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.

Netflix trusted me in a way that was very, very pleasant.

I wouldn't make a connection between the daily news and volcanoes.

In private I'm not. You will have to ask my wife. She maintains I'm a fluffy husband.

The elections have a different platform, the town hall is the platform for it. But the other question behind all this is should I run for president?

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.

"Jack Reacher" was easy because the function of the villain was just to spread fear and horror.

Netflix knew I was going to North Korea and Ethiopia and Iceland. They saw the film and liked it and that was that.

I'm not a journalist; I'm a poet.

My crew [on "Fitzcarraldo" filming] actually said, "We have filmed it from outside on the rocks of the shore. We should be on board [the ship]," and I said it's dangerous, I only do it if you cinematographer Thomas Mauch and you actor [Klaus] Kinski decide on your own.

For such an advanced civilization as ours to be without images that are adequate to it is as serious a defect as being without memory.

Clive [Oppenheimer] and I figured out that I'm the only one probably in the film industry who is clinically sane. I say that as a joke, but there's a grain of truth to it. I'm not a stupid daredevil who jumps into the crater of the volcano to get the closest close-up, I'm not one of those. And you have to be aware that you have a crew with you and you are responsible.

We live in an era when established values are no longer valid, when prodigious discoveries are being made every year, when catastrophes of unbelievable proportions occur weekly. In ancient Greek the word “chaos” means “gaping void” or “yawning emptiness.” The most effective response to the chaos in our lives is the creation of new forms of literature, music, poetry, art and cinema.

Very often, footage that you have shot develops its own dynamic, it's own life, that is totally unexpected, and moves away from you're original intentions. And you have to acknowledge, yes, there is a child growing and developing and moving in a direction that isn't expected-accept it as it is and let it develop its own life.

Perseverance has kept me going over the years. Things rarely happen overnight. Filmmakers should be prepared for many years of hard work. The sheer toil can be healthy and exhilarating.

I think I'm a prudent filmmaker.

I am so used to plunging into the unknown that any other surroundings and form of existence strike me as exotic and unsuitable for human beings.

I am a product of my failures,

The Rogue Film School is not for the faint-hearted. It is for those who have travelled on foot, who have worked as bouncers in sex clubs or as wardens in a lunatic asylum, for those who are willing to learn about lock picking or forging shooting permits in countries not favoring their projects. In short: for those who have a sense of poetry. For those who are pilgrims. For those who can tell a story to four year old children and hold their attention. For those who have a fire burning within. For those who have a dream.

I couldn't roam wildly and speak secretly with villagers [in North Korea]. No way you could do that. And honestly, I didn't even try. I was realistic of what I could do and yet persuaded them into accepting numerous things that I shouldn't have filmed.

You will learn more by walking from Canada to Guatemala than you will ever learn in film school.

The trees are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don’t think they sing. They just screech in pain. …Taking a close look at what’s around us, there is some sort of harmony: it’s the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder.

Well, it had to be about the stories and the people who live under the volcano, what kind of new gods do they create? What sort of demons? And of course North Korea falls clearly into this category since the socialist revolution at the end of the Second World War. Somehow they adopted the myth of the power and dynamics of their volcano.

I do not believe in the Cinema verite. Sometimes a really good lie is better than any truth.

Hold firm to your vision but don't be a tyrant on set,

If you want to do a film, steal a camera, steal raw stock, sneak into a lab and do it!

I am not an artist and never have been. Rather I am like a craftsman and feel very close to the mediaeval artisans who produced their work anonymously and who, along with their apprentices, had a true feeling for the physical materials they were working with.

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

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.

Public life is constantly aware of the volcano.

Once in a while I come across a director who hasgrown up thousands of miles from me, and the work touches me.Through these issues/50/images I am connected and something is illuminated.And I know then that I am not alone.

We live in a society that has no adequate images anymore, and if we do not find adequate images and an adequate language for our civilization with which to express them, we will die out like the dinosaurs.

Money doesn't make films. You just do it and take the initiative.

There are photos of Kim Jong-un right up atop the volcano. I actually wrote a letter to him asking if I could speak on camera. I never got an answer. But what was interesting was the people who were responsible for us, our "guards," it took them two days to figure out how I should address him. "President? No, you can't because there's a president for eternity." And it was a time when his status was still in flux. Only a few months later there was this party congress which assigned an official title to him, but that was after we did our film.

Tourism is a mortal sin.

If you want to propose marriage to your girlfriend and you live in England and she is in Sicily, do the decent thing and walk down there. Travelling by car or aeroplane wouldn't be right at such a moment.

There is never an excuse not to finish a film.

I was able to persuade them to let me shoot in areas that were beyond the volcano itself. Beyond the joint scientific program between Cambridge University and North Korean scientists. I was able to film in a kindergarten, subway, other things you would not normally be allowed to do.

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.

I like to direct landscapes just as I like to direct actors and animals.

What have we done to our images? What have we done to our embarrassed landscapes? I have said this before and will repeat it again as long as I am able to talk: if we do not develop adequate images we will die out like dinosaurs.

The deal was we had to have people accompanying us and they would ask us not to film something [in North Korea]. For example, we wanted to film at a certain place and there happened to be a building under construction and it didn't look as fancy as the other buildings, so they wanted us to shoot where everything looked finished and made a good impression of the cityscape.

Fact creates norms, and truth illumination.

Along with this rapid growth of forms of communication at our disposal - be it fax, phone, email, Internet or whatever - human solitude will increase in direct proportion.

For me a true landscape is not just a representation of a desert or a forest. It shows an inner state of mind, literally inner landscapes, and it is the human soul that is visible through the landscapes presented in my films.

I prefer the material woman.

We ought to be grateful that the Universe out there knows no smile.

Well they are very frightening for me because their stupidity is so flat. You look into the eyes of a chicken and you lose yourself in a completely flat, frightening stupidity. They are like a great metaphor for me... I kind of love chicken, but they frighten me more than any other animal.

I have never been one of those who cares about happiness. Happiness is a strange notion. I am just not made for it. It has never been a goal of mine; I do not think in those terms.

I always had a feeling, for example, that there should be something from Verdi's "Requiem" in the film. You hear it when you see the lava flow in Iceland. That turned out to be a very easy choice.

There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.

But the question that everyone wanted answered was whether I would have the nerve and the strength to start the whole process from scratch. I said yes; otherwise I would be someone who had no dream left, and without dreams I would not want to live.

Get used to the bear behind you.

Coincidences always happen if you keep your mind open, while storyboards remain the instruments of cowards who do not trust in their own imagination and who are slaves of a matrix If you get used to planning your shots based solely on aesthetics, you are never that far from kitsch.

Everyone who makes films has to be an athlete to a certain degree because cinema does not come from abstract academic thinking; it comes from your knees and thighs.

THE ACT OF KILLING invents a new form of cinematic surrealism.

There's a completely new culture out there. I'm not a participant of texting and driving - or texting at all - but I see there's something going on in civilization which is coming with great vehemence at us.

In the face of the obscene, explicit malice of the jungle, which lacks only dinosaurs as punctuation, I feel like a half-finished, poorly expressed sentence in a cheap novel.

That shot in "Into the Inferno" somehow popped up while my editor and I were viewing the footage. I immediately said, "That looks like the opening shot because the camera approaches the action very slowly and we have enough time to insert some of the main credits into it." So it was a practical choice. At the same time, you see these tiny figures standing at the rim of something, and all of a sudden, the camera rises further and you find yourself looking straight down into an inferno.

I love nature, but against my better judgment.

You can't have a helicopter fly over boiling lava. It would've exploded from the heat, and is just way too dangerous. The pilot of a helicopter would've flatly refused anyway.

I am someone who takes everything very literally. I simply do not understand irony, a defect I have had ever since I was able to think independently.

If your project has real substance, ultimately the money will follow you like a common cur in the street with its tail between its legs.

The opinion of the public is sacred. The director is a cook who merely offers different dishes to them and has no right to insist they react in a particular way. A film is just a projection of light, completed only when it crosses the gaze of the audience[...]

You have to be very prudent with what you are doing and what sort of tools you are utilizing. Drones have become a wonderful new tool in filmmaking.

Your film is like your children. You might want a child with certain qualities, but you are never going to get the exact specification right. The film has a privilege to live its own life and develop its own character. To suppress this is dangerous. It is an approach that works the other way too: sometimes the footage has amazing qualities that you did not expect

ِِِِِِِِِِArt house theaters are vanishing. They have almost disappeared completely, and that means there's a shift in what audiences want to see. And they have to be aware of that and be realistic. It's as simple as that.

We have to articulate ourselves. Otherwise we would be cows in the field.

Nature is monumentally indifferent.

You can fight a rumour only with an even wilder rumour.

If you’re purely after facts, please buy yourself the phone directory of Manhattan. It has four million times correct facts. But it doesn’t illuminate.

The universe couldn't care less about us. I say this very clearly in the film [ "Into the Inferno"]: our planet is "indifferent to scurrying roaches, retarded reptiles and vapid humans alike."

For a moment the feeling crept over me that my work, my vision, is going to destroy me, and for a fleeting moment I let myself take a long, hard look at myself, something I would not otherwise do--out of instinct, on principle, out of self-preservation--look at myself with objective curiosity to see whether my vision has not destroyed me already. I found it comforting to note that I was still breathing.

A fairly young, intelligent-looking man with long hair asked me whether filming or being filmed could do harm, whether it could destroy a person. In my heart the answer was yes, but I said no.

I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature.

If you don't read, you will never be a filmmaker.

I make films because I have not learned anything else and I know I can do it to a certain degree. And it is my duty because this might be the inner chronicle of what we are. We have to articulate ourselves, otherwise we would be cows in the field.

Film is not analysis, it is the agitation of mind; cinema comes from the country fair and the circus, not from art and academicism.

I'm trying to find these rare moments where you feel completely illuminated. Facts never illuminate you. The phone directory of Manhattan doesn't illuminate you, although it has factually correct entries, millions of them. But these rare moments of illumination that you find when you read a great poem, you instantly know. You instantly feel this spark of illumination. You are almost stepping outside of yourself and you see something sublime.

We are just a blip. I found it very interesting when Clive [Oppenheimer] interviewed the Ethiopian scientists and asked them, "Do we have another 100,000 years?" In their calculation, mankind will be entering a very critical phrase a thousand years from now.

I know for sure that there is only one step from insecticide to genocide.

Centuries from now our great-great-great-grandchildren will look back at us with amazement at how we could allow such a precious achievement of human culture as the telling of a story to be shattered into smithereens by commercials, the same amazement we feel today when we look at our ancestors for whom slavery, capital punishment, burning of witches, and the inquisition were acceptable everyday events.

It's not because nature is angry, it's rather that we are stupid. We're not doing the right thing with our planet.

I am torn between the beauty of the natural world, which you see all around us, and the idea that some dumb tornado could blow a telephone pole onto my sweet Camaro.

If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big color photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer. Such vulgarity is healthy and safe.

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.

Our presence on this planet does not seem to be sustainable. Our technological civilisation makes up particularly vulnerable. There is talk all over the scientific community about climate change. Many of them [scientists] agree, the end of human life on earth is assured.

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

I'm reminded of an interview Larry King had on his talk show with one of Michael Jackson's sisters. He's talking about how many millions she made on her latest record, and all of a sudden, she looks at him tearfully and says, "Larry, you know, I'm not interested in money or sales or songs. I'm a spiritual person." And I thought, "Oh my god..."

at the press conference for the film he impressed everyone with his complete sincerity and innocence. he said he had come to see the sea for the first time and marveled at how clean it was. someone told him that, in fact, it wasn't. 'when the world is emptied of human beings' he said, 'it will become so again

Meanwhile it's got stormy, the tattered fog even thicker, chasing across my path. Three people are sitting in a glassy tourist cafe between clouds and clouds, protected by glass from all sides. Since I don't see any waiters, it crosses my mind that corpses have been sitting there for weeks, statuesque. All this time the cafe has been unattended, for sure. Just how long have they been sitting here, petrified like this?

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.