A few years ago, we had a family reunion on the coast of Spain, where my brother was living at the time. At his invitation and expense, we had a wond… - Werner Herzog

said that, in fact, I wasn't a creature of the film industry at all but just someone who at the end of the war had learned how to milk cows. Even all these years later, I start to shake when I think of the odds, but I went on to tell them that in the course of my work with actors and faces I could often sense some of the things that lay beneath. I was, for instance, usually able to recognize people who could milk cows. I turned to McCulley and said: "For instance, you, sir, I am willing to bet you know how to milk a cow." He yelped, banged his thighs, and started miming milking. Yes, indeed, McCulley had grown up on a farm in Tennessee. I don't even want to think about the bottomless embarrassment I would have found myself in had I been wrong.

When Santa appeared with his sunglasses up on the balcony, I was completely convulsed by a paroxysm of laughter. A few people gave me strange looks and I retreated to the bistro. While eating my sandwich I ate one end of my scarf as well, which cracked me up so much inside that the whole table started to shake, thought outwardly my face gave no sign of laughter, however contorted it must have been. The waiter started staring at me, so I fled to the edge of the town into the camper, into the showpiece.

It takes the poetic imagination to make visible a deeper layer of truth.