Werner Herzog Quotes

I`m not out to win prizes - that`s for dogs and horses.

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

I love nature but against my better judgment.

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

Every gray hair on my head is because of Kinski. - on Klaus Kinski

At my utopian film academy I would have students do athletic things with real physical contact, like boxing, something that would teach them to be unafraid. I would have a loft with a lot of space where in one corner there would be a boxing ring. Students would train every evening from eight to ten with a boxing instructor: sparring, somersaulting (backwards and forwards), juggling, magic card tricks. Whether or not you would be filmmaker by the end I do not know, but at least you would come out as an athlete.

.. So, you have to be daring to do things like this, because the world is not easily accepting of filmmaking. There will always be some sort of an obstacle, and the worst of all obstacles is the spirit of bureaucracy. You have to find your way to battle bureaucracy. You have to outsmart it, to outgut it, to outnumber it, to outfilm them -- that`s what you have to do.

It is not only my dreams, my belief is that all these dreams are your`s as well. The only distinction between me and you is that I can articulate them. And that is what poetry or painting or literature or film making is all about... it`s as simple as that. 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.

Through invention, through imagination, through fabrication, I become more truthful than the little bureaucrats.

There are certainly laws and elements that make a film more accessible to mainstream audiences. If you`ve got Tom Cruise as a strongman, I`m sure it would have larger audiences, but it wouldn`t have the same substance.

I have the impression that the images that surround us today are worn out, they are abused and useless and exhausted. They are limping and dragging themselves behind the rest of our cultural evolution. When I look at the postcards in tourist shops and the images and advertisements that surround us in magazines, or I turn on the television, or if I walk into a travel agency and see those huge posters with that same tedious and rickety image of the Grand Canyon on them, I truly feel there is something dangerous emerging here. The biggest danger, in my opinion, is television because to a certain degree it ruins our vision and makes us very sad and lonesome. Our grandchildren will blame us for not having tossing hand-grenades into TV stations because of commercials. Television kills our imagination and what we end up with are worn out images because of the inability of too many people to seek out fresh ones.

(On working with Klaus Kinski:) "I had to domesticate the wild beast."

Technology has a great advantage in that we are capable of creating dinosaurs and show them on the screen even though they are extinct 65 million years. All of a sudden, we have a fantastic tool that is as good as dreams are.

You should look straight at a film; that`s the only way to see one. Film is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.

Actually, for some time now I have given some thought to opening a film school. But if I did start one up you would only be allowed to fill out an application form after you have walked alone on foot, let`s say from Madrid to Kiev, a distance of about five thousand kilometres. While walking, write. Write about your experiences and give me your notebooks. I would be able to tell who had really walked the distance and who had not. While you are walking you would learn much more about filmmaking and what it truly involves than you ever would sitting in a classroom. During your voyage you will learn more about what your future holds than in five years at film school. Your experiences would be the very opposite of academic knowledge, for academia is the death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion.

I invite any sort of myths (about myself) because I like the stooges and doppelgangers and doubles out there. I feel protected behind all these things. Let them blossom! I do not plant them, I do not throw out the seeds. I advise you to read Herzog on Herzog because there you see a few clarifications.

(On the ending of Stroszek (1977):) "When I saw the dancing chicken, I knew I would create a grand metaphor -- for what, I don`t know."

Every gray hair on my head I call Kinski.

TV uses landscapes. I transform landscapes -- I direct landscapes.

Let`s put it this way: 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.

On Klaus Kinski: "People think we had a love-hate relationship. Well, I did not love him, nor did I hate him. We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other`s murder".

Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good Kung Fu film.

I despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality to be very base and vile. I would much rather eat potato chips on the sidewalk.

Our children will hate us for not throwing hand grenades into every TV station because of commercials.

If I had to climb into hell and wrestle the devil himself for one of my films, I would do it.

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 colour photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer. Such vulgarity is healthy and safe.

It is my firm belief, and I say this as a dictum, that all these tools now at our disposal, these things part of of this explosive evolution of means of communication, mean we are now heading for an era of solitude. 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.

Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.

I don`t spend sleepless nights over getting very bad reviews.

Perhaps I seek certain utopian things, space for human honour and respect, landscapes not yet offended, planets that do not exist yet, dreamed landscapes. Very few people seek these images today.

Facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.

Strangely enough, I`ve always believed that my stories were mainstream stories; the films are narrated in a way that you never have a boring moment.

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 don`t spend sleepless nights over getting very bad reviews.

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.

I cannot work fast enough. I cannot cope fast enough, really. And just releasing a film is hard.

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.

To me, adventure is a concept that applies only to those men and women of earlier historical times, like the medieval knights who traveled into the unknown. The concept has degenerated constantly since then... I absolutely loathe adventurers, and I particularly hate this old pseudo-adventurism where the mountain climb becomes about confronting the extremes of humanity.

(During the making of Fitzcarraldo (1982)) I shouldn`t make movies anymore. I should go to a lunatic asylum.

Film should be looked at straight on, it is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.

There are certainly laws and elements that make a film more accessible to mainstream audiences. If you`ve got Tom Cruise as a strongman, I`m sure it would have larger audiences, but it wouldn`t have the same substance.

You leave this jungle now and you`ll find eight bullets in you and the ninth one will be for me - to Klaus Kinski on the set of Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972) (aka Aguirre: The Wrath of God).

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.

People think we had a love-hate relationship. Well, I did not love him, nor did I hate him. We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other`s murder.