Top 120 Werner Herzog Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.”

— Werner Herzog

52. “I make films because I have not learned anything else and I know I can do it to a certain degree. And it is my duty because this might be the inner chronicle of what we are. We have to articulate ourselves, otherwise we would be cows in the field.”

— Werner Herzog

53. “For such an advanced civilization as ours to be without images that are adequate to it is as serious a defect as being without memory.”

— Werner Herzog

54. “The punishment itself is something I respectfully disagree with, but for thousands and thousands of years it was practiced everywhere.”

— Werner Herzog

55. “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.”

— Werner Herzog

56. “Money doesn’t make films. You just do it and take the initiative.”

— Werner Herzog

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

— Werner Herzog

58. “In my films, I hope there are a few moments where you feel almost illuminated, like in a state of ecstasy, stepping out of yourself, beyond yourself and perceiving something which is only, in the case of cinema, possible in collective dreams.”

— Werner Herzog

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

— Werner Herzog

60. “It’s all movies for me. And besides, when you say documentaries, in my case, in most of these cases, means “feature film” in disguise.”

— Werner Herzog

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

— Werner Herzog

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

— Werner Herzog

63. “Of course, as a German, I wouldn’t like to tell the American people how to handle their criminal justice.”

— Werner Herzog

64. “For me, the distinction between documentaries and feature films is not so clear – my “documentaries” were largely scripted, rehearsed, and repeated, and have a lot of fantasy and concoction in them.”

— Werner Herzog

65. “I’m not into digital marketing, downloading, or streaming – I’ve always been a man of the theaters.”

— Werner Herzog

66. “Perseverance has kept me going over the years. Things rarely happen overnight. Filmmakers should be prepared for many years of hard work. The sheer toil can be healthy and exhilarating.”

— Werner Herzog

67. “I’m not a journalist; I’m a poet.”

— Werner Herzog

68. “I know for sure that there is only one step from insecticide to genocide.”

— Werner Herzog

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

— Werner Herzog

70. “I never planned my career in steps. It’s all coming at me like burglars in the night.”

— Werner Herzog

71. “What’s really bad is that after acknowledging a wrong decision, I don’t have the nerve to turn back, since I’d rather correct myself with another wrong decision.”

— Werner Herzog

72. “I see planets that don’t exist and landscapes that have only been dreamed.”

— Werner Herzog

73. “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.”

— Werner Herzog

74. “Facts do not convey truth. That’s a mistake. Facts create norms, but truth creates illumination.”

— Werner Herzog

75. “I’m quite convinced that cooking is the only alternative to film making. Maybe there’s also another alternative, that’s walking on foot.”

— Werner Herzog

76. “If you want to do a film, steal a camera, steal raw stock, sneak into a lab and do it!”

— Werner Herzog

77. “Tourism is sin, and travel on foot virtue.”

— Werner Herzog

78. “If you’re purely after facts, please buy yourself the phone directory of Manhattan. It has four million times correct facts. But it doesn’t illuminate.”

— Werner Herzog

79. “If you want to propose marriage to your girlfriend and you live in England and she is in Sicily, do the decent thing and walk down there. Travelling by car or aeroplane wouldn’t be right at such a moment.”

— Werner Herzog

80. “The collapse of the stellar universe will occur – like creation – in grandiose splendor.”

— Werner Herzog

81. “Without dreams we would be cows in a field, and I don’t want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life with this project.”

— Werner Herzog

82. “Coincidences always happen if you keep your mind open, while storyboards remain the instruments of cowards who do not trust in their own imagination and who are slaves of a matrix If you get used to planning your shots based solely on aesthetics, you are never that far from kitsch.”

— Werner Herzog

83. “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.”

— Werner Herzog

84. “We have to articulate ourselves. Otherwise we would be cows in the field.”

— Werner Herzog

85. “If you go to Florence, it has all surface beauty, but like Venice, it’s simply a museum of Renaissance times. Los Angeles is raw, uncouth and bizarre, but it’s a place of substance. It has more new horizons than any other place.”

— Werner Herzog

86. “I have been in lots of very intense life situations. I have been shot at, and I have been hungry, and I have been in solitude, and I have also briefly been behind bars. So in a way, I know the heart of men.”

— Werner Herzog

87. “Some of the most important caves, like Lascaux in the Dordogne region in France, have had to be closed down. There had been too many people allowed in, and they left a mold on the walls that is spreading and which can’t really be stopped.”

— Werner Herzog

88. “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.”

— Werner Herzog

89. “If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big color photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer. Such vulgarity is healthy and safe.”

— Werner Herzog

90. “I like to direct landscapes just as I like to direct actors and animals.”

— Werner Herzog

91. “It’s a great metaphor. For what? I don’t know to this day. But I know it’s a great metaphor.”

— Werner Herzog

92. “I function better in the jungle in Amazonia or Antarctica or Alaska or the Sahara desert. An artificial environment like a studio has never attracted me. I could work in a studio, but I would never really feel at home.”

— Werner Herzog

93. “In Germany, you would be hanged if you cracked a joke about Hitler and you would be killed by the state if you were insane in a project of euthanasia.”

— Werner Herzog

94. “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.”

— Werner Herzog

95. “If your project has real substance, ultimately the money will follow you like a common cur in the street with its tail between its legs.”

— Werner Herzog

96. “I have always postulated that we have to find a new way to deal with reality. It’s not so much facts that interest me, but a deeper truth in them – an ecstasy of truth, an ecstatic truth that illuminates us. That’s what I’ve been after.”

— Werner Herzog

97. “I don’t care whether the person is guilty or not guilty. It’s not my business to establish guilt or innocence. It’s a court of law that does that and a jury does that, but not me.”

— Werner Herzog

98. “English is a really wonderful language and I urge you all to investigate it.”

— Werner Herzog

99. “There is never an excuse not to finish a film.”

— Werner Herzog

100. “I do whatever pushes me hardest. It’s coming at me and I try to. It’s like uninvited guest and I have to wrestle them out the door or through the window – get them out and get over with them quickly.”

— Werner Herzog