German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director (born 1942)
I have a deep aversion to too much introspection, to navel-gazing. I'd rather die than go to an analyst, because it's my view that something fundamentally wrong happens here. If you harshly light every last corner of a house, the house will become uninhabitable . . . I am convinced that it's psychoanalysis – along with quite a few other mistakes – that has made the twentieth century so terrible. As far as I'm concerned, the twentieth century, in its entirety, was a mistake.
Amos Vogel was a mentor, a guiding light for me. In his presence, you always rose. But his importance to me is of minor significance. What is significant is that with him an entire epoch ends. The Last Lion has left us.
I am still not capable – or rather unwilling – to understand the fact that Amos passed away, because a man like him cannot be dead. His traces are everywhere.
(on the passing of Amos Vogel, his friend for more than 45 years)
An elderly woman gathering wood, plump and impoverished, tells me about her children one by one, when they were born, when they died. When she becomes aware that I want to go on, she talks three times as fast, shortening destinies, skipping the deaths of three children although adding them later on, unwilling to let even one fate slip away — and this in a dialect that makes it hard for me to follow what she is saying. After the demise of an entire generation of offspring, she would speak no more about herself except to say that she gathers wood, every day; I should have stayed longer.
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- to accept that
it is much stronger than we are.
Kinski always says it's full of...
erotic elements.
I don't see it so much erotic.
I see it more full of obscenity.
It's just-
Nature here is vile and base.
I wouldn't see anything erotical here.
I would see fornication
and asphyxiation...
and choking
and fighting for survival...
and growing and...
just rotting away.
Of course, there's a lot of misery.
But it is the same misery
that is all around us.
The trees here are in misery,
and the birds are in misery.
I don't think they- they sing.
They just screech in pain.
It's an unfinished country.
It's still prehistorical.
The only thing that is lacking is-
is the dinosaurs here.
It's like a curse
weighing on an entire landscape.
And whoever...
goes too deep into this...
has his share of that curse.
So we are cursed
with what we are doing here.
It's a land that God,
if he exists...
has-has created in anger.
It's the only land where-
where creation is unfinished yet.
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.
And 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 n
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.
Enhance Your Quote Experience
Enjoy ad-free browsing, unlimited collections, and advanced search features with Premium.