Werner Herzog famous quotes

I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony; but chaos, hostility and murder.
-- Werner Herzog

#Believe #Common #Chaos

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.
-- Werner Herzog

#Insecurity #Noir #Financial

Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film.
-- Werner Herzog

#Intellectual #Film #Kung Fu

My non-fiction films are pretty much fiction, or at least close... It's all "movies" for me. I never have searched for a subject. They always just come along. They never come by way of decision-making. They just haunt me. I can't get rid of them. I did not invite them.
-- Werner Herzog

#Decision #Way #Fiction

Read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read...if you don't read, you will never be a filmmaker.
-- Werner Herzog

#Filmmaking #Filmmaker

I have always postulated that we have to find a new way to deal with reality. It's not so much facts that interest me, but a deeper truth in them - an ecstasy of truth, an ecstatic truth that illuminates us. That's what I've been after.
-- Werner Herzog

#Reality #Way #Facts

English is a really wonderful language and I urge you all to investigate it
-- Werner Herzog

#Language #Wonderful

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.
-- Werner Herzog

#Book #Believe #Giving

Academia is the death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion. Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates.
-- Werner Herzog

#Art #Passion #Opposites

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.
-- Werner Herzog

#Devastation #Fascination #Crime

I would travel down to Hell and wrestle a film away from the devil if it was necessary.
-- Werner Herzog

#Devil #Film #Hell

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.
-- Werner Herzog

#Vibrancy #Energy #Sometimes

What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.
-- Werner Herzog

#Dream #Ocean #Sleep

I have been in lots of very intense life situations. I have been shot at, and I have been hungry, and I have been in solitude, and I have also briefly been behind bars. So in a way, I know the heart of men.
-- Werner Herzog

#Heart #Men #Solitude

I think the worst that can happen in filmmaking is if you're working with a storyboard. That kills all intuition, all fantasy, all creativity.
-- Werner Herzog

#Creativity #Thinking #Intuition

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

#Punishment #Years #Disagree

I have not seen a film as powerful, surreal, and frightening in at least a decade unprecedented in the history of cinema.
-- Werner Herzog

#Powerful #Cinema #Film

I think a state should not be in the capacity of killing anyone with the exception of warfare.
-- Werner Herzog

#Thinking #Warfare #Killing

You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise.
-- Werner Herzog

#Mind #Documentaries #Bears

When you look at the paintings at Chauvet Cave, they're not primitive or like children's little scribbles, it bursts on the scene fully accomplished and when you look through the faces of cultural history, art history, it has never gotten any better.
-- Werner Herzog

#Art #Children #Looks

The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.
-- Werner Herzog

#Nature #Feet #World

Chauvet Cave is rather like the awakening of the modern human soul or I would say the awakening of modern human culture. Because Neanderthal men who still rode the landscape parallel to the people who did these paintings didn't have culture. There's no evidence of culture, no symbolic depiction, no evidence of music, no evidence of sculptures, no evidence of religious beliefs.
-- Werner Herzog

#Religious #Men #People

One of the most original and poetic works of cinema made anywhere in the seventies.
-- Werner Herzog

#Cinema #Poetic #Made

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.
-- Werner Herzog

#Might #Cows #Fields

Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species—including man—crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue.
-- Werner Herzog

#Ocean #Men #Land

Never wallow in your troubles; despair must be kept private and brief.
-- Werner Herzog

#Despair #Trouble

I'm a very circumspect and prudent person, and I eliminate danger as far as it can be done.
-- Werner Herzog

#Prudent #Done #Danger

I see planets that don't exist and landscapes that have only been dreamed.
-- Werner Herzog

#Landscape #Planets

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.
-- Werner Herzog

#Documentaries #Fantasy #Film

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

#Ocean #Civilization #Ice

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.
-- Werner Herzog

#Men #Good Man #Sides

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.
-- Werner Herzog

#Art #Looks #Way

We do not see the danger clearly enough that we develop images adequate to our state of civilization. When you watch TV, you know instantly that there's something wrong with the images. When you open a magazine and see the ads, you know there's something wrong with the images. And it's unhealthy and not good and outright dangerous, in my opinion.
-- Werner Herzog

#Civilization #Magazines #Adequate

It is not only my dreams, my belief is that all these dreams are yours 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 filmmaking is all about... 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.
-- Werner Herzog

#Dream #Literature #Might

With actors, normally I don't like to have any conversation about background and about motivations and all this.
-- Werner Herzog

#Motivation #Actors #Conversation

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

#Facts #Strange #Sometimes

I do whatever pushes me hardest. It's coming at me and I try to. It's like uninvited guest and I have to wrestle them out the door or through the window - get them out and get over with them quickly.
-- Werner Herzog

#Doors #Trying #Guests

I shouldn't make movies anymore. I should go to a lunatic asylum.
-- Werner Herzog

#Asylums #Should #Lunatic

I never planned my career in steps. It's all coming at me like burglars in the night.
-- Werner Herzog

#Night #Careers #Steps

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

#Devil #Film #Hell

I'm not into the culture of complaint. I roll up my sleeves and somehow I get it together.
-- Werner Herzog

#Together #Culture #Sleeves

Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates.
-- Werner Herzog

#Art #Film #Scholar

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.
-- Werner Herzog

#Simple #Needs #Doe

The collapse of the stellar universe will occur - like creation - in grandiose splendor.
-- Werner Herzog

#Splendor #Creation #Stellar

There's more substance in my prose and my poetry than in all my films together. Writing is a more direct way of expressing yourself because, in cinema, you always have finances, organization, actors, technical apparatus and all that stuff coming in between.
-- Werner Herzog

#Writing #Organization #Together

Do you not then hear this horrible scream all around you that people usually call silence.
-- Werner Herzog

#People #Silence #Scream

In my films, I hope there are a few moments where you feel almost illuminated, like in a state of ecstasy, stepping out of yourself, beyond yourself and perceiving something which is only, in the case of cinema, possible in collective dreams.
-- Werner Herzog

#Dream #Cinema #Film

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

#Film #Enough

I function better in the jungle in Amazonia or Antarctica or Alaska or the Sahara desert. An artificial environment like a studio has never attracted me. I could work in a studio, but I would never really feel at home.
-- Werner Herzog

#Home #Alaska #Desert

Facts do not convey truth. That's a mistake. Facts create norms, but truth creates illumination.
-- Werner Herzog

#Mistake #Illumination #Facts

Without dreams we would be cows in a field, and I don't want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life with this project.
-- Werner Herzog

#Dream #Would Be #Want

Martin Luther was asked, what would you do if tomorrow the world would come to an end, and he said, 'I would plant an apple tree today.' This is a real good answer. I would start shooting a movie.
-- Werner Herzog

#Real #Apples #Tree

Tourism is sin, and travel on foot virtue.
-- Werner Herzog

#Travel #Feet #Tourism

You must live life in its very elementary forms. The Mexicans have a very nice word for it: pura vida. It doesn't mean just purity of life, but the raw, stark-naked quality of life. And that's what makes young people more into a filmmaker than academia.
-- Werner Herzog

#Life #Nice #Mean