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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I think there should be holy war against yoga classes.

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

I'm not an interviewer. I have conversations.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Mars is much closer to the characteristics of Earth. It has a fall, winter, summer and spring. North Pole, South Pole, mountains and lots of ice. No one is going to live on Venus; no one is going to live on Jupiter.

When I was young, I wanted to do something more low-key, like become a drummer in a rock band.

It's so much in me to want to keep experimenting all the time. It's just inherent. Therefore I keep reaching for instruments I don't particularly know how to play, and then I become excited.

There is simply no defending the preferred mode of travel for many of the celebrity crazies who lecture us about carbon credits. Do you think these folks are willing to give up their mansions and private jets in order to 'save the planet?'

I've been studying the Bible for a long time. I remember that after the first five years or so of diligently studying the Word, I didn't feel like I had made any progress. There were a lot of things in my life that were out of order, and I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere.

Just as God's love to us believers, his children, is unalterably the same, whatever may be the manifestations of that love; and as his peace with us is the same, however much our peace may be disturbed; so it is also with regard to our being in fellowship or partnership with him: it remains unalterably the same so far as God is concerned.

Joining the military is not to be taken lightly. You're putting every part of yourself at risk, not just your body but your moral and spiritual centre.

Sometimes to find the light switch you need to wander in the dark.

The beauty of having an LLC in today's world is No. 1, you have the ability to act and react as nimbly as need be to create change, and you have the ability to invest politically, in the for-profit sector and the nonprofit sector simultaneously.

Americans do not have a good track record when it comes to preparing for disasters, unless they see a clear possibility of personally being in harms way.

It kills me not to be there, not to be in the White House doing what needs to be done.

Well, I really don't like heights. I don't get on the top deck of a double-decker because that's a bit high for me. I always feel that I'm going to hurl myself off, so heights are a problem.

Legislatures not driven to desperation by the problems of public education may be able to see the threat in vouchers negotiable in sectarian schools.

Going to Morocco was massive; that's where I really found music which had the African syncopation and swing mixed with Arabic strains, and together they had this transporting, bittersweet quality.