Werner Herzog

I'm not very eager to sit and look at my films all the time.

Yes, the pyramids have been built, but if you give me 300,000 disciplined men and give me 30 years, I could build a bigger one.

Let's put it this way: 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 have to be aware of that and be realistic. It's as simple as that.

I don't spend sleepless nights over getting very bad reviews.

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

There are certainly laws and elements that make a film more accessible to mainstream audiences. If you've got Tom Cruise as a strongman, I'm sure it would have larger audiences, but it wouldn't have the same substance.

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

Facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.

Perhaps I seek certain utopian things, space for human honour and respect, landscapes not yet offended, planets that do not exist yet, dreamed landscapes.

I'm not a journalist; I'm a poet.

I'm a very professional man. I'm not out for the experience of adventure.

I'm politically interested, but I have no particular talent as a political beast, stepping out and running for office.

I'm not into digital marketing, downloading, or streaming - I've always been a man of the theaters.

I'm simply not afraid. It's not in my dictionary of behaviour.

I think there are specific times where film noir is a natural concomitant of the mood. When there's insecurity, collapse of financial systems - that's where film noir always hits fertile ground.

I'm the last one who would do self-analysis.

I find it interesting that there are impostors out on the Internet pretending to be Werner Herzog.

I'm not an interviewer. I have conversations.

I think the worst that can happen in filmmaking is if you're working with a storyboard. That kills all intuition, all fantasy, all creativity.

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

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

I think it is a quest of literature throughout the ages to describe the human condition.

I work very fast and steadily, and I don't hardly ever notice that I'm working. It feels like just breathing or walking when I do films.

I live my life outside of the glitz and glamour of the red carpet events, and so you'll never see me there. I'm never at parties.

I do other sorts of things. I act in other people's movies. I direct operas. I write books.