We have volcanoes also in our immediate neighborhood. I wish we didn't have to travel that far. Probably the kind of magnitude and awesome raw power of them is very fascinating, and of course it's very cinematic.

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.

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

[Tim White] always spoke about his work in terms of forensics, as if he was investigating a crime scene. While we were there, they found the fossilized excrement of a lion that had turned into stone, and we would immediately start to concoct stories. Was it a lion that killed the early human? Of course, the lion could've been there three weeks later, or maybe 20,000 years earlier.

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.

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

I think I'm a prudent filmmaker.