Get used to the bear behind you.

My contacts with the film industry can be described in very simple terms: The industry does not really need me, and I do not really need the industry.

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

Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film.

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.

The danger is to stupidly believe that depicting facts gives us much insight. If facts were the only thing that counted, the telephone directory would be the book of books.

You must live life in its very elementary forms. The Mexicans have a very nice word for it: pura vida. It doesn't mean just purity of life, but the raw, stark-naked quality of life. And that's what makes young people more into a filmmaker than academia.