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

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.

The power of a volcano when it erupts is so evident, so visible, so palpable.

When you look at any of my films you will immediately be able to tell this is a [Werner] Herzog film. Even if you didn't have any credits, in two minutes flat you would know.

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

Because you're delegated to a cook book recipe and you slavishly and pedantically rely on it while you're shooting and you're not relying on your creative instincts and you're not relying on something which brings life into movies and excitement into it.