We are not accountants, We are not accountants who do number after number after number of storyboard images, a robot could do it ultimately, but what I'm doing a robot cannot do.

My crew [on "Fitzcarraldo" filming] actually said, "We have filmed it from outside on the rocks of the shore. We should be on board [the ship]," and I said it's dangerous, I only do it if you cinematographer Thomas Mauch and you actor [Klaus] Kinski decide on your own.

North Korea has a very striking mythology there. It is influencing the whole nation.

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

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.

I could not become an American citizen. I would not like to become a citizen of a country that has capital punishment.

It has always been my aim to find that sort of passion and figure out how to transform it into cinema.Timothy Treadwell's footage was almost like a diary, and he had always dreamt of becoming the movie star in his own gigantic production.