If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big color … - Werner Herzog

Facts do not convey truth. That's a mistake. Facts create norms, but truth creates illumination.

Americans believe that they are normal, that they make sense, and that the rest of the world is exotic. They do not seem to understand that they are the most exotic people in the world right now.

With the point of a knife, our mother scratched a mark in it for each day, Monday to Sunday, allowing about a slice of bread for each of us. When hunger got to be very bad, we were each given a piece from the next day's ration because my mother hoped something might turn up in the meantime, but generally the bread was finished by Friday, and Saturdays and Sundays were particularly bad. My deepest memory of my mother, burned into my brain, is a moment when my brother and I were clutching at her skirts, whimpering with hunger. With a sudden jolt, she freed herself, spun round, and she had a face full of an anger and despair that I have never seen before or since. She said, perfectly calmly: "Listen, boys, if I could cut it out of my ribs, I would cut it out of my ribs, but I can't. All right?" At that moment, we learned not to wail. The so-called culture of complaint disgusts me.