Werner Herzog

I travel without barely any luggage. Just a second set of underwear and binoculars and a map and a toothbrush.

I'm not into digital marketing, downloading, or streaming - I've always been a man of the theaters.

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

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

I never have searched for a subject. They always just come along. They never come by way of decision-making. They just haunt me. I can't get rid of them. I did not invite them.

You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise.

I think the worst that can happen in filmmaking is if you're working with a storyboard. That kills all intuition, all fantasy, all creativity.

There 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.

I'm not an interviewer. I have conversations.

I think there are specific times where film noir is a natural concomitant of the mood. When there's insecurity, collapse of financial systems - that's where film noir always hits fertile ground.

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.

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

If 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.

Life on our planet has been a constant series of cataclysmic events, and we are more suitable for extinction than a trilobite or a reptile. So we will vanish. There's no doubt in my heart.

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

If an actor knows how to milk a cow, I always know it will not be difficult to be in business with him.

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.

There are specific times where film noir is a natural concomitant of the mood. When there’s insecurity, collapse of financial systems – that’s where film noir always hits fertile ground.

I know whenever it comes to be really dysfunctional and vile and base and hostile on screen, I'm good at that!

I think there should be holy war against yoga classes.

I cannot work fast enough. I cannot cope fast enough, really. And just releasing a film is hard.

Facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.

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

Perhaps I seek certain utopian things, space for human honour and respect, landscapes not yet offended, planets that do not exist yet, dreamed landscapes.

You should look straight at a film; that's the only way to see one. Film is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.

Ambition is to be the fastest runner on this planet, to be the first on the South Pole, which is a grotesque perversion of ambition. It's an ego trip, and I'm not on an ego trip. I don't have ambitions - I have a vision.

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 despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality to be very base and vile. I would much rather eat potato chips on the sidewalk.

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

I have nothing against 3D films but I do not need to see them.

Sometimes bad luck hits you like in an ancient Greek tragedy, and it's not your own making. When you have a plane crash, it's not your fault.

I like and I love everything that has to do with cinema: writing, directing, editing, creating music, and even acting.

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

There are certainly laws and elements that make a film more accessible to mainstream audiences. If you've got Tom Cruise as a strongman, I'm sure it would have larger audiences, but it wouldn't have the same substance.