35 quotes
Cinema Verité confounds fact and truth, and thus plows only stones. And yet, facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.
Minnesota declaration (1999)
People think we had a love-hate relationship. Well, I did not love him, nor did I hate him. We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other's murder.
Herzog on Herzog (2002)
May I propose a Herzog dictum? Those who read own the world, and those who watch television lose it.
Herzog on Herzog (2002)
I like to direct landscapes just as I like to direct actors and animals.
Herzog on Herzog (2002)
Together, I said, we shall boil fire and stop fish.
Everyone who makes films has to be an athlete to a certain degree because cinema does not come from abstract academic thinking; it comes from your knees and thighs.
Herzog on Herzog (2002)
Often he was a joy, and you know, he was one of the few people I ever learned anything from.
Herzog on Herzog (2002)
I am someone who takes everything very literally. I simply do not understand irony, a defect I have had ever since I was able to think independently.
Herzog on Herzog (2002)
I have never been one of those who cares about happiness. Happiness is a strange notion. I am just not made for it. It has never been a goal of mine; I do not think in those terms.
Herzog on Herzog (2002)
It is my duty because this might be the inner chronicle of what we are, and we have to articulate ourselves. Otherwise we would be cows in the field.
Herzog on Herzog (2002)
Of course we are challenging nature itself and it hits back. It just hits back. That's all, and that's "grandiose" about it, and we have to accept that it's much stronger than we are.
Burden of Dreams (1982)
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.
Minnesota declaration (1999)
Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species—including man—crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue.
Minnesota declaration (1999)
Your film is like your children. You might want a child with certain qualities, but you are never going to get the exact specification right. The film has a privilege to live its own life and develop its own character. To suppress this is dangerous.
Herzog on Herzog (2002)
Dear America: You are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of your people would kill another 1/3, while 1/3 watches.
Disputed