Werner Herzog Quotes

I believe the common denominator of the Universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.

I don't spend sleepless nights over getting very bad reviews.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At the same time, there's something magnificent about volcanoes; they created the atmosphere that we need for breathing.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Public life is constantly aware of the volcano.

The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.

Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates.

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

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

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

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."

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

Spirit of immersion and curiosity and awe and participation is something which Timothy Treadwell and I have in common.

Every man should pull a boat over a mountain once in his life.

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

I travel without barely any luggage. Just a second set of underwear and binoculars and a map and a toothbrush.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

I like and I love everything that has to do with cinema, writing, directing, editing, creating music, and even acting.

Facts do not constitute truth.

I am a product of my failures.

I always loved celluloid cameras in the early days that were sturdy and reliable. Even under tropical conditions and downpour of rain, it would still work.

May I propose a Herzog dictum? Those who read own the world, and those who watch television lose it.

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.

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

I think Irish people started to move to the United States - many things that were of consequence. And it was a tiny and mild event compared to what had happened 74,000 years ago.

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.

If you don’t have a deal in two days, you won’t have a deal in two years.

I'm very, very curious about how people live under the volcano, how they handle the permanence of danger.

When you look at my film you see footage that is unbelievably awesome and beautiful and dangerous looking. It's something that is very, very cinematic.