Werner Herzog

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

“Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.”

“I'm simply not afraid. It's not in my dictionary of behaviour.”

“I could not become an American citizen. I would not like to become a citizen of a country that has capital punishment.”

“What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.”

“Your film is like your children. You might want a child with certain qualities, but you are never going to get the exact specification right. The film has a privilege to live its own life and develop its own character. To suppress this is dangerous. It is an approach that works the other way too: sometimes the footage has amazing qualities that you did not expect”

“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.”

“I don't spend sleepless nights over getting very bad reviews.”

“I find it interesting that there are impostors out on the Internet pretending to be Werner Herzog.”

“I 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.”

“Why go to Antarctica, why do a film like 'Grizzly Man'? It's the sheer joy of storytelling - it's the urge.”

“Every man should pull a boat over a mountain once in his life.”

“The universe is not harmonious: you know that by looking outside.”

“I think it is a quest of literature throughout the ages to describe the human condition.”

“I'm not an activist.”

“I'm politically interested, but I have no particular talent as a political beast, stepping out and running for office.”

“The universe is monstrously indifferent to the presence of man.”

“Let's put it this way: art 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.”

“I'm not very eager to sit and look at my films all the time.”

“Technology has a great advantage in that we are capable of creating dinosaurs and show them on the screen even though they are extinct 65 million years. All of a sudden, we have a fantastic tool that is as good as dreams are.”