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Film Quotes by Werner Herzog

92 Film quotes by Werner Herzog

All Film quotes Werner Herzog’s page

Werner Herzog treats filmmaking like a wild experiment. He talks about mixing music with a lava flow, cooking or walking as other ways to create, and warns that strict storyboards can kill imagination. He believes films grow from curiosity, not from money or scholarly rules.

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I think I'm a prudent filmmaker.

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Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates.

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I have nothing against 3D films but I do not need to see them.

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There is never an excuse not to finish a film.

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THE ACT OF KILLING invents a new form of cinematic surrealism.

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I do not believe in the Cinema verite. Sometimes a really good lie is better than any truth.

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One of the most original and poetic works of cinema made anywhere in the seventies.

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If I had to climb into hell and wrestle the devil himself for one of my films, I would do it.

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Why go to Antarctica, why do a film like 'Grizzly Man'? It's the sheer joy of storytelling - it's the urge.

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If you want to do a film, steal a camera, steal raw stock, sneak into a lab and do it!

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When I film, there are no emotions. That would be the last thing.

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Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film.

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You should look straight at a film; that's the only way to see one. Film is not the art of scholars but…

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When you look at my film you see footage that is unbelievably awesome and beautiful and dangerous looking. It's something that is…

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There are certainly laws and elements that make a film more accessible to mainstream audiences. If you've got Tom Cruise as a…

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Perseverance has kept me going over the years. Things rarely happen overnight. Filmmakers should be prepared for many years of hard work.…

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You have to be very prudent with what you are doing and what sort of tools you are utilizing. Drones have become…

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I have made 70 or so films. In all my films not a single actor, a single extra, was hurt. Not one.…

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For me a true landscape is not just a representation of a desert or a forest. It shows an inner state of…

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I have learned a lot through defeats, and, until today, it's - I'm still haunted by defeats, and they do happen. Sometimes,…

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[This kind of strange mythology about me.] I've pulled a huge steamboat over a mountain; I've done a feature film with all…

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While you are walking you would learn much more about filmmaking than if you were in a classroom. During your voyage you…

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I was able to persuade them to let me shoot in areas that were beyond the volcano itself. Beyond the joint scientific…

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I try to be after something that is deeply reverberating inside of our souls, some deep echo from - even from prehistory.…

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The opinion of the public is sacred. The director is a cook who merely offers different dishes to them and has no…

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[ Digital revolution ] only has allowed me to work faster, editing digitally, which I'm doing right now, a film on volcanoes.…

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The deal was we had to have people accompanying us and they would ask us not to film something [in North Korea].…

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Of course, you do not do any research: you have to go there and do your film. It's not that I would…

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Otherwise you have to repeat a lot when you're filming. And I've seen the film and it's in a border town in…

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The Rogue Film School is not for the faint-hearted. It is for those who have travelled on foot, who have worked as…

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There are photos of Kim Jong-un right up atop the volcano. I actually wrote a letter to him asking if I could…

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You should bear in mind that almost all my documentaries are feature films in disguise.

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I like and I love everything that has to do with cinema: writing, directing, editing, creating music, and even acting.

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Academia is the death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion. Film is not the art of scholars, but of…

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Money doesn't make films. You just do it and take the initiative.

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I cannot work fast enough. I cannot cope fast enough, really. And just releasing a film is hard.

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You will learn more by walking from Canada to Guatemala than you will ever learn in film school.

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I would travel down to Hell and wrestle a film away from the devil if it was necessary.

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I know what I'm talking about and I've never been over budget, in 70 films.

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It doesn't matter whether you shoot on celluloid or on digital, you better make a good film.

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More by Werner Herzog

If your project has real substance, ultimately the money will follow you like a common cur in the street with its tail between its…

Every man should pull a boat over a mountain once in his life.

I know whenever it comes to be really dysfunctional and vile and base and hostile on screen, I'm good at that.

When we speak about trespassing, we speak about artistic trespassing. You have to be prudent and have common sense and a sense of responsibility…

If you want to propose marriage to your girlfriend and you live in England and she is in Sicily, do the decent thing and…

I'm a very circumspect and prudent person, and I eliminate danger as far as it can be done.

It is not only my dreams, my belief is that all these dreams are yours as well. The only distinction between me and you…

My non-fiction films are pretty much fiction, or at least close... It's all "movies" for me. I never have searched for a subject. They…

If an actor knows how to milk a cow, I always know it will not be difficult to be in business with him,

ِِِِِِِِِِArt house theaters are vanishing. They have almost disappeared completely, and that means there's a shift in what audiences want to see. And they…

I always had a feeling, for example, that there should be something from Verdi's "Requiem" in the film. You hear it when you see…

Along with this rapid growth of forms of communication at our disposal - be it fax, phone, email, Internet or whatever - human solitude…

I had complete freedom. They [Netflix] knew roughly what I was doing.

For example, the face of Nicole Kidman in Queen of the Desert and she is the most beautiful goddess on screen that you can…

I have always postulated that we have to find a new way to deal with reality. It's not so much facts that interest me,…