Best Werner Herzog Quotes & Sayings

I never planned my career in steps. It's all coming at me like burglars in the night. — Werner Herzog

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

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

A perfect morning; in perfect harmony with myself I'm walking briskly uphill ... For once I didn't notice that I was walking, all the way up to the mountaintop forest I was absorbed in deep thought. Perfect clarity and freshness in the air, up further there's some snow. The tangerines make me completely euphoric. — Werner Herzog

English is a really wonderful language and I urge you all to investigate it — Werner Herzog

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

Women have a very good sense for seeing instantly what constitutes a good man. Not physically. The physical strength is only a small side of it. — Werner Herzog

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

I think it is a quest of literature throughout the ages to describe the human condition. — Werner Herzog

In a way, I managed to get the deepest things, the best things out of people. That's why I'm a filmmaker. If you don't have it in you, you'd better do something else. — Werner Herzog

There's more substance in my prose and my poetry than in all my films together. Writing is a more direct way of expressing yourself because, in cinema, you always have finances, organization, actors, technical apparatus and all that stuff coming in between. — Werner Herzog

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. — Werner Herzog

The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot. — Werner Herzog

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

I love nature, but against my better judgment. — Werner Herzog

The chicken's still dancing
the chicken won't stop — Sarah Kane

Academia is the death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion. Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates. — Werner Herzog

The trees are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing. They just screech in pain. ... Taking a close look at what's around us, there is some sort of harmony: it's the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. — Werner Herzog

In the Chauvet Cave, there is a painting of a bison embracing the lower part of a naked female body. Why does Pablo Picasso, who had no knowledge of the Chauvet Cave, use exactly the same motif in his series of drawings of the Minotaur and the woman? Very, very strange. — Werner Herzog

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

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

James Joyce is a cul-de-sac. [Ulysses is] ... an example how literature branched out and went into, lost itself in nowhere, no man's land. — Werner Herzog

In my life, I wanted to meet certain people. I never met Charlie Chaplin, but I met Werner Herzog. — Philippe Petit

Facts do not constitute truth, — Werner Herzog

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. — Werner Herzog

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

I'm a very professional man. I'm not out for the experience of adventure. — Werner Herzog

I shouldn't make movies anymore. I should go to a lunatic asylum. — Werner Herzog

Nothing I have witnessed, from lava to crustacean, assailed me liked the caked debris haunting that small plastic soap hammock in the smaller of the bathrooms. Nausea is not a sufficient word. — 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. — Werner Herzog

Tourism is sin, and travel on foot virtue. — Werner Herzog