Wim Wenders Quotes

The Cuban people have an amazingly strong and unbroken spirit.

Whoever came up first with that saying a picture is worth a thousand words didn't understand the first thing about either one.

In fact, it is amazing how much European films - Italian, French, German and English - have recovered a certain territory of the audience in their countries over the last few years.

To evoke the classic period of Italian cinema in a little film seemed like a great, fun thing to do. I had relations to that period. I had known Fellini and I had known Antonioni. I had made a movie with Antonioni and I had visited Fellini in his studios. So, it seemed like something worthwhile doing. You bring yourself to that mythical cinema.

The world of fashion. I'm interested in the world, not in fashion! But, maybe I was too quick to put down fashion. Why not look at it without prejudice? Why not examine it like any other industry, like the movies for example?

Images are no longer what they used to be. They can't be trusted any more. We all know that. You know that. When we grew up, images were telling stories and showing them. Now they're all into selling. They've changed under our very eyes. They don't even know how to do it anymore. They've plain forgotten. Images are selling out the world. And at a big discount.

There are a lot of things that dancers can do that actors cannot and actors can do that dancers cannot.

An image that is unseen can't sell anything. It is pure, therefore true, beautiful, in one word: innocent. As long as no eye contaminates it, it is in perfect unison with the world. If it is not seen, the image and the object it represents belong together.

Loving photography and wanting to be a painter, it all ended up in the process of filmmaking. It's strange professionally be to connected because it connects you to architecture, it connects you to painting, it connects you to writers, to actors. It connects you to really all of the arts.

Ibrahim tells his story without a grain of complaint, and this was true for all of the band members. This is very much part of the Cuban spirit and soul.

It's a great lesson in modesty that you realize you're illiterate in a field that you think you're an expert in.

Sex and violence was never really my cup of tea; I was always more into sax and violins.

So I am getting a little bored with defining one type of film as American and the other European or from somewhere else because the division is no longer true.

The most important question for me when I begin working on a film is where to start. For a book, what makes you convinced there is a story that is worthwhile?