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

The opinion of the public is sacred. The director is a cook who merely offers different dishes to them and has no right to insist they react in a particular way. A film is just a projection of light, completed only when it crosses the gaze of the audience[...]

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

I'm not a journalist; I'm a poet. I had a discourse, an encounter with these people but I never had a list of questions.

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

I think psychology and self-reflection is one of the major catastrophes of the twentieth century.

I have been in lots of very intense life situations. I have been shot at, and I have been hungry, and I have been in solitude, and I have also briefly been behind bars. So in a way, I know the heart of men.