Quotes from 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.

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.

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.

Along with this rapid growth of forms of communication at our disposal - be it fax, phone, email, internet or whatever - human solitude will increase in direct proportion.

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.

What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.

I'm the last one who would do self-analysis.

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.

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.

If you do not understand how finances are functioning, you are in a very precarious situation, at least concerning long-term survival.

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.

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.