Quotes from Werner Herzog

Perseverance is where the gods dwell.

Friendship is possible with mice.

The land here is being carelessly killed. (pp 54)

Don't look for the state of the art most expensive cameras. You should be capable today with fairly simple equipment of high caliber. You can edit on your own laptop, and you can make a film yourself for, let's say, even a feature film under $10,000. Learn from the documentary film school. Really didn't have any equipment or any money.

In mir wühlte eine Verlassenheit, wie Termiten in einem gefallenen Baumstamm.

Most details are factually correct; some are not. What was important to the author was something other than accuracy, some essence he thought he glimpsed when he encountered the protagonist of this story.

Over the mountain forest outside of Sachrang, in the last days of the War, an aeroplane dropped a metal device that was visible in the treetops by its flag. We children were certain the flag was wandering from tree to tree, that the mysterious device was moving forward. During the night some men went off and, when they returned at daybreak, they refused to divulge information concerning what they'd found.

An ocean without monsters would be like sleep without dreams.

A hunter, with a second hunter nearby, asked me what I was looking for up there. I said I liked his dog better than I liked him.

One solitary, overriding thought: get away from here. People frighten me.

Only if this were a film would I consider it real.

Today I often said 'forest' to myself. Truth itself wanders through the forests.

I think there should be holy war against yoga classes.

me fascinan las cajetillas de cigarrillos al borde del camino, sobretodo cuando no están estrujadas, entonces se hinchan ligeramente, adquieren cierto aspecto de cadáveres, los cantos ya no están tan definidos y el celofán se empaña desde dentro, es vapor condensado en gotitas de agua por el frío.

Roll up your sleeves and work as a bouncer in a sex club or a warden in a lunatic asylum or a machine operator in a slaughterhouse. Drive a taxi for six months and you'll have enough money to make a film. Walk on foot, learn languages and a craft or trade that has nothing to do with cinema. Filmmaking — like great literature — must have experience of life at its foundation. Read Conrad or Hemingway and you can tell how much real life is in those books.

Why go to Antarctica, why do a film like 'Grizzly Man'? It's the sheer joy of storytelling - it's the urge.

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

As for the "anger" of the volcano, we leave it up to the local populations who create their demons, their gods and their divine punishment.

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.

Film is not analysis, it is the agitation of mind; cinema comes from the country fair and the circus, not from art and academicism.

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.

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.

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.

I am too much into what I'm doing in my work.