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.
Werner HerzogSomeone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film.
Werner HerzogOrson Welles, one of the best of the best. One of the strongest. As strong as an animal. He somehow was pushed out of the business because he would spend the entire budget of the film before he had even done half the pre-production.
Werner Herzog[ Digital revolution ] only has allowed me to work faster, editing digitally, which I'm doing right now, a film on volcanoes. I can edit almost as fast as I'm thinking, editing with celluloid means always searching for this little reel of film, and number it, and scribble on it with some sort of pens, and gluing it together, and working on a flatbed. It's much, much slower.
Werner HerzogI do not recall to [Kim Jong-un], but it was complex. "Dear young leader of the people and chairman of the joint military commission" or something like that.
Werner HerzogFragility of modern world leaves me with the idea we'd better anticipate what's going on. We take our right steps today and now. And we'd better avoid, that we are overdependent on, let's say, the internet.
Werner HerzogIt seems odd, but people who see my films normally take them in in a deeper way than you would actually watch a film, let's say The Terminator or whatever.
Werner HerzogI do not want to have a cell phone. I do not want it for cultural reasons. I do not want to be available all the time. I want to have time to think and to touch somebody, and have a meal across my kitchen table without a cell phone, being constantly on tweets.
Werner HerzogI am torn between the beauty of the natural world, which you see all around us, and the idea that some dumb tornado could blow a telephone pole onto my sweet Camaro.
Werner HerzogWe are surrounded by worn-out, banal, useless and exhausted images, limping and dragging themselves behind the rest of our cultural evolution.
Werner HerzogIf you do not have an absolutely clear vision of something, where you can follow the light to the end of the tunnel, then it doesn't matter whether you're bold or cowardly, or whether you're stupid or intelligent. Doesn't get you anywhere.
Werner HerzogOf course, you do not do any research: you have to go there and do your film. It's not that I would travel there before without a camera and spend half a year on one of those volcanoes and then come back with a camera. You have to have some sort of a clear mindset.
Werner HerzogIt's very strange, for example, in North Korea where the volcano at the Chinese border is some sort of the mythical birthplace of the Korean people.
Werner HerzogThe daredevil aspect to what I did there is moving a monstrously big ship over a mountain in the jungle of Peru with 800 or 900 or so native people from the area. So that idea was wild but the way it was executed was prudent. Nobody was ever hurt and when it became clear that we had to be more secure with the posts that would hold the ship, I spent 12 days having a post built that would have withstood the force of 10 times the weight of my ship.
Werner HerzogI have a great map of the Tibesti Mountains in the southern Sahara or Northern Chad. It's a dream of mine to go there, but it's such a volatile area, you have to be prudent.
Werner HerzogI always felt completely confident - it's like in a feature film, knowing your principle character is extremely well-cast. I had that same confidence in Clive [Oppenheimer].
Werner HerzogFacts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.
Werner HerzogFilm is not analysis, it is the agitation of mind; cinema comes from the country fair and the circus, not from art and academicism.
Werner HerzogIn Germany, you would be hanged if you cracked a joke about Hitler and you would be killed by the state if you were insane in a project of euthanasia.
Werner Herzog"Jack Reacher" was easy because the function of the villain was just to spread fear and horror.
Werner HerzogThere are photos of Kim Jong-un right up atop the volcano. I actually wrote a letter to him asking if I could speak on camera. I never got an answer. But what was interesting was the people who were responsible for us, our "guards," it took them two days to figure out how I should address him. "President? No, you can't because there's a president for eternity." And it was a time when his status was still in flux. Only a few months later there was this party congress which assigned an official title to him, but that was after we did our film.
Werner HerzogI think Irish people started to move to the United States - many things that were of consequence. And it was a tiny and mild event compared to what had happened 74,000 years ago.
Werner HerzogSpirit of immersion and curiosity and awe and participation is something which Timothy Treadwell and I have in common.
Werner HerzogI don't see poetry as something that has to do with too much emotion anyway. It has to do with language.
Werner HerzogI am someone who takes everything very literally. I simply do not understand irony, a defect I have had ever since I was able to think independently.
Werner HerzogOnce in a while I come across a director who hasgrown up thousands of miles from me, and the work touches me.Through these issues/50/images I am connected and something is illuminated.And I know then that I am not alone.
Werner HerzogIn a way, I managed to get the deepest things, the best things out of people. That's why I'm a filmmaker. If you don't have it in you, you'd better do something else.
Werner HerzogI'm not into the culture of complaint. I roll up my sleeves and somehow I get it together.
Werner HerzogBecause 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.
Werner HerzogThe trees are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I donโt think they sing. They just screech in pain. โฆTaking a close look at whatโs around us, there is some sort of harmony: itโs the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder.
Werner HerzogููููููููููArt house theaters are vanishing. They have almost disappeared completely, and that means there's a shift in what audiences want to see. And they have to be aware of that and be realistic. It's as simple as that.
Werner HerzogIt's not far-fetched that almost everywhere in the world where you have volcanoes you have mythologies or new gods being created.
Werner HerzogI'm trying to find these rare moments where you feel completely illuminated. Facts never illuminate you. The phone directory of Manhattan doesn't illuminate you, although it has factually correct entries, millions of them. But these rare moments of illumination that you find when you read a great poem, you instantly know. You instantly feel this spark of illumination. You are almost stepping outside of yourself and you see something sublime.
Werner HerzogPeople think we had a love-hate relationship. Well, I did not love him, nor did I hate him. We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other's murder.
Werner HerzogI would travel down to Hell and wrestle a film away from the devil if it was necessary.
Werner HerzogAmos Vogel was a mentor, a guiding light for me. In his presence, you always rose. But his importance to me is of minor significance. What is significant is that with him an entire epoch ends. The Last Lion has left us.I am still not capable - or rather unwilling - to understand the fact that Amos passed away, because a man like him cannot be dead. His traces are everywhere.
Werner HerzogThere is a fascination about crime, which is understandable, but hardly anyone talks about the families of victims of violent crime and the devastation that is beyond the victim alone.
Werner Herzog