You don't need a framework. You need a painting, not a frame.

In a way, everything concerning a movie leaves me cold.

Sometimes my heart hurts so much, I beat it with my fists. I try to run. But you cannot run from this. It waits for you. Even when you think you have escaped it, it is there.

I could be with a woman in a bed, for weeks even, and it would seem to me like three seconds. Or 300 years.

Whenever I was with a woman, I always sort of want another one. So there was always another one. I can't explain this.

Why have I had this life? If I knew, I wouldn't have done it.

I am dying of hunger.

But words - words are not enough!

I have to shoot without any breaks. I yell at Herzog and hit him. I have to fight for every sequence. I wish Herzog would catch the plague, more than ever.

One should judge a man mainly from his depravities. Virtues can be faked. Depravities are real.

You leap over the wall of one ghetto and find yourself in another ghetto.

I don't need anybody to tell me how to be alive.

I sell myself for the highest price. Exactly like a prostitute. There is no difference.

About 25 years ago, I was in an apartment, and next door, they put on the radio, so I struck the wall with my fist, but they did not put the radio down. I took a tool and banged until I made a hole through the wall. It was like a comedy movie.

The ultimate acting is to destroy yourself.

I make movies for money, exclusively for money.

It is true what Rimbaud said; If you think a book is strong enough, try it at the ocean, in the wind, at the waves. If the book can resist the ocean, then it exists. Otherwise, throw it away.

I didn't choose solitude.

I am your fairy tale. Your dream. Your wishes and desires, and I am your thirst and your hunger and your food and your drink.

I knew there were, in myself, the souls of millions of people who lived centuries ago; not just people but animals, plants, the elements, things, even, matter. All of these exist in me.

Where a beast would have claws, I was born with talent.

Put a bird cage near the window so that the bird can see the sky? It's much better to look than not to, even if it hurts.

When you are there, you are. With words, you aren't.

Once, I took a taxi. I hate those limousines. They stink and their drivers have been driving dead people to the cemeteries.

What do you think, that a dollar in a savings account is freedom? Maybe you have understood nothing I have said.

The dimensions of my feelings are too violent.

The truth is, I can never die. For I will be in everything and see you in everything and watch over you. I am your reaction in the water of a mountain lake.

Fun? There is no fun.

It is the Nobel Prize I want. It's worth $400,000.

You have to protect yourself, your body, your being. You cannot treat it badly; you have to keep it, make as sensitive as possible.

I am not the Jesus of the official church tolerated by those in power. I am not your superstar.

Why do I continue making movies? Making movies is better than cleaning toilets.

You don't need a framework. You need a painting, not a frame.

People who do not see the terrible things therefore do not see the beautiful things, either.

The craft of painting has virtually disappeared. There is hardly anyone left who really possesses it. For evidence one has only to look at the painters of this century.

I don't know if it was the whole audience getting stoned out of their minds getting ready for the Floyd thing or what it was, but it was like playing to a painting.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

I don't like painting flowers in my music. I like painting guts and pain.

Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.

If the weather is good I go into the nearby wood - there I am painting a small beech forest (in the sun) with a few conifers mixed in. This takes until 8 'o clock.

The paintings may communicate even better because people are lazy and they can look at a painting with less effort than they can read a poem.

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

The worlds I paint leave a lot to engage the imagination by hinting at what lies beyond the four edges of the painting. I think getting beyond the four edges of an opportunity or challenge is one of the basic skills you need in business.

When I was in art college, I would be painting, and I would create something on a canvas that was actually quite attractive. But if I got frightened and tried to protect that, that canvas would die.

My movement from painting to film was a very conscious one.

I believe that painting should come through the avenues of meditation rather than the canals of action.

For example, in painting the form arises from abstract elements of line and color, while in cinema the material concreteness of the image within the frame presents - as an element - the greatest difficulty in manipulation.

Coming to understand a painting or a symphony in an unfamiliar style, to recognize the work of an artist or school, to see or hear in new ways, is as cognitive an achievement as learning to read or write or add.

I see architecture not as Gropius did, as a moral venture, as truth, but as invention, in the same way that poetry or music or painting is invention.