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.
— Werner Herzog
I live my life outside of the glitz and glamour of the red carpet events, and so you'll never see me there. I'm never at parties.
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.
I have nothing against 3D films but I do not need to see them.
Every man should pull a boat over a mountain once in his life.
I travel without barely any luggage. Just a second set of underwear and binoculars and a map and a toothbrush.
If an actor knows how to milk a cow, I always know it will not be difficult to be in business with him.
I think psychology and self-reflection is one of the major catastrophes of the twentieth century.
I prefer to be alive, so I'm cautious about taking risks.
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'm not very eager to sit and look at my films all the time.
I'm politically interested, but I have no particular talent as a political beast, stepping out and running for office.
I'm a very professional man. I'm not out for the experience of adventure.
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.
Facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.
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 cannot work fast enough. I cannot cope fast enough, really. And just releasing a film is hard.
I do other sorts of things. I act in other people's movies. I direct operas. I write books.
I work very fast and steadily, and I don't hardly ever notice that I'm working. It feels like just breathing or walking when I do films.
Why go to Antarctica, why do a film like 'Grizzly Man'? It's the sheer joy of storytelling - it's the urge.
You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise.
The universe is not harmonious: you know that by looking outside.
The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.
I think there should be holy war against yoga classes.
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.
I'm the last one who would do self-analysis.
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'm not into digital marketing, downloading, or streaming - I've always been a man of the theaters.
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'm not a journalist; I'm a poet.
Film should be looked at straight on; it is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.
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.
I know whenever it comes to be really dysfunctional and vile and base and hostile on screen, I'm good at that!
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.
The universe is monstrously indifferent to the presence of man.
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 it is a quest of literature throughout the ages to describe the human condition.
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'm not an interviewer. I have conversations.
I could not become an American citizen. I would not like to become a citizen of a country that has capital punishment.
I find it interesting that there are impostors out on the Internet pretending to be Werner Herzog.
Yes, the pyramids have been built, but if you give me 300,000 disciplined men and give me 30 years, I could build a bigger one.
I like and I love everything that has to do with cinema: writing, directing, editing, creating music, and even acting.
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'm not an activist.
I'm simply not afraid. It's not in my dictionary of behaviour.
Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.
Perhaps I seek certain utopian things, space for human honour and respect, landscapes not yet offended, planets that do not exist yet, dreamed landscapes.
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.
I don't spend sleepless nights over getting very bad reviews.
