Top 314 Quotes & Sayings by Werner Herzog
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a German director Werner Herzog.
Last updated on September 9, 2024.
Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.
Sometimes bad luck hits you like in an ancient Greek tragedy, and it's not your own making. When you have a plane crash, it's not your fault.
Film should be looked at straight on; it is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.
Life on our planet has been a constant series of cataclysmic events, and we are more suitable for extinction than a trilobite or a reptile. So we will vanish. There's no doubt in my heart.
Yes, the pyramids have been built, but if you give me 300,000 disciplined men and give me 30 years, I could build a bigger one.
I cannot work fast enough. I cannot cope fast enough, really. And just releasing a film is hard.
I'm a very professional man. I'm not out for the experience of adventure.
Facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.
I'm the last one who would do self-analysis.
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.
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.
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.
If you do not have an absolutely clear vision of something, where you can follow the light to the end of the tunnel, then it doesn't matter whether you're bold or cowardly, or whether you're stupid or intelligent. Doesn't get you anywhere.
I'm not an interviewer. I have conversations.
I'm simply not afraid. It's not in my dictionary of behaviour.
I'm politically interested, but I have no particular talent as a political beast, stepping out and running for office.
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.
If an actor knows how to milk a cow, I always know it will not be difficult to be in business with him.
Why go to Antarctica, why do a film like 'Grizzly Man'? It's the sheer joy of storytelling - it's the urge.
I think it is a quest of literature throughout the ages to describe the human condition.
I think 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 think the worst that can happen in filmmaking is if you're working with a storyboard. That kills all intuition, all fantasy, all creativity.
I'm not very eager to sit and look at my films all the time.
The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.
The universe is not harmonious: you know that by looking outside.
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.
I'm not into digital marketing, downloading, or streaming - I've always been a man of the theaters.
I could not become an American citizen. I would not like to become a citizen of a country that has capital punishment.
I prefer to be alive, so I'm cautious about taking risks.
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.
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'm not a journalist; I'm a poet.
The universe is monstrously indifferent to the presence of man.
I have nothing against 3D films but I do not need to see them.
You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise.
Ambition is to be the fastest runner on this planet, to be the first on the South Pole, which is a grotesque perversion of ambition. It's an ego trip, and I'm not on an ego trip. I don't have ambitions - I have a vision.
Perhaps I seek certain utopian things, space for human honour and respect, landscapes not yet offended, planets that do not exist yet, dreamed landscapes.
I do other sorts of things. I act in other people's movies. I direct operas. I write books.
I know whenever it comes to be really dysfunctional and vile and base and hostile on screen, I'm good at that!
I travel without barely any luggage. Just a second set of underwear and binoculars and a map and a toothbrush.
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.
I find it interesting that there are impostors out on the Internet pretending to be Werner Herzog.
Every man should pull a boat over a mountain once in his life.
I don't spend sleepless nights over getting very bad reviews.
I think psychology and self-reflection is one of the major catastrophes of the twentieth century.
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.
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.
I think there should be holy war against yoga classes.
I like and I love everything that has to do with cinema: writing, directing, editing, creating music, and even acting.
Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world.
I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature.
Read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read...if you don't read, you will never be a filmmaker.
What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.
We have to articulate ourselves. Otherwise we would be cows in the field.
Nature is monumentally indifferent.
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.
Facts do not convey truth. That's a mistake. Facts create norms, but truth creates illumination.
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.
Money doesn't make films. You just do it and take the initiative.
I believe the common denominator of the Universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.
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