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.

Only the poets can hold the country together, and I wanted to hold Germany together.

The wonderful thing is that Clive [Oppenheimer ] insisted on training his camera - his private camera - on me at one point. We were discussing things such as how to avoid certain dangers, while reflecting on a volcano that had threatened to explode 40 years ago.

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've never left my culture. I've left my country, but I've not left my culture. In the same way, you shouldn't be worried why George Lucas is going to the outer galaxy to make a movie. He's still making a film within his culture; he's making an American film. I go to Thailand or the Peruvian jungle, the Amazon, and I still make Bavarian films.

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

It's not far-fetched that almost everywhere in the world where you have volcanoes you have mythologies or new gods being created.