Werner Herzog Quotes

La memoria, en su innata misericordia, no permite que el dolor se conserve en el recuerdo

I'm completely aware and utterly aware that Russia [the Soviet Union] lost 25 million people for winning the war, and I know that Russian troops were the ones who liberated concentration camps, Auschwitz and others, and I'm aware that there's an incredible sacrifice on the side of Russia, and I do believe that it's ignored because of course of political interests. It's very much the question what are the facts, maybe 600 or so thousand American soldiers lost their lives in the Second World War, 25–26 million Russian. Those are facts that cannot be ignored, and today it's not that really important what really happened, it's more the question who owns the narrative, and occupying the narrative has created some sort of lopsided ideologies in lopsided information, that we see every day.

It is my firm belief, and I say this as a dictum, that all these tools now at our disposal, these things part of this explosive evolution of means of communication, mean we are now heading for an era of solitude. 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.

I believe the common denominator of the Universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.

One more thing: Philippe, you are not a coward-so what I want to hear from you is the ecstatic truth about the twin towers.

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

But walking became more important and more explicit in connection with my grandfather Rudolf, my father's father; I had the sense of walking in his landscapes. I was closer to him than to my actual father. I think it all had to do with the way the turn-of-the-century generation had deeper historical roots than the generation of my parents, who quit the continuum of European culture when they opted for National Socialism. They descended into a vague Germano-mystical archaism and went under with it. Perhaps I am being too subjectively concentrated on my own family here. Families are strange creatures, and mine is no exception. In addition, there is the circumstance that I knew my grandfather only when he was already insane.

Friendship is possible with mice.

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.

Am I in the wrong place here, or in the wrong life? Did I not recognize, as I sat in a train that raced past a station and did not stop, that I was on the wrong train, and did I not learn from the conductor that the train would not stop at the next station, either, a hundred kilometers away, and did he not also admit to me, whispering with his hand shielding his mouth, that the train would not stop again at all?

Taking a close look at - at what's around us there - there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of... overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle - Uh, we in comparison to that enormous articulation - we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban... novel... a cheap novel. We have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication... overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order. Even the - the stars up here in the - in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no real harmony as we have conceived it. But when I say this, I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it, I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment.

But his most exciting action was something we witnessed ourselves. At issue were some five tons of contraband coffee, as we were informed much later. At any rate, word had got out, and one night the police were on their way to arrest Siegel Hans. He was able to escape out of a window. All he had on him was his trumpet, and the next morning when it got light, he blew down on his trumpet from the Spitzstein. The police gave chase, but by the time they got to the summit, he was blowing from the cloven top of the Mühlhorn or the peak of the Geigelstein on the other side of the valley. The police, humiliated, called up more and more reinforcements, but Hans continued tooting at them from peak to peak. We heard him. We saw troops of police running through the valley and up the slopes, but neither they nor the officials stationed at the pass got a glimpse of him. He was like a phantom. We children knew why they couldn't catch him. As far as we were concerned, he had run from the Spitzstein all along the border heading into the sunset until he had run right around the whole of Germany to the Geigelstein on its east-facing side. It was the only way he could avoid having to go down into the valley. Twelve days later, he surrendered to the police, but by then, he had a mythic status among his admirers.

I like to direct landscapes just as I like to direct actors and animals.

It is not only my dreams, my belief is that all these dreams are yours as well. The only distinction between me and you is that I can articulate them. And that is what poetry or painting or literature or filmmaking is all about... 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.

Fact creates norms, and truth illumination.