312 Quotes by Werner Herzog

We are still doing somersaults for it. It's the usual pandemonium that makes moviemaking an odd profession, and I am the lion tamer.

I have never been one of those who cares about happiness. Happiness is a strange notion. I am just not made for it. It has never been a goal of mine; I do not think in those terms.

Of course this is me revisiting my own past, going into the wilderness, telling a story, perhaps not the one I set out to tell, ... I had no opinion about Treadwell . . . I gave him space, let him tell me his story. And it was pretty easy to see that he was haunted by demons -- illuminated, courageous and cowardly, exhilarated and in love with the idea of himself as a star.

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 the lava flow in Iceland. That turned out to be a very easy choice.

Strangely enough, I've always believed that my stories were mainstream stories; the films are narrated in a way that you never have a boring moment.

But the question that everyone wanted answered was whether I would have the nerve and the strength to start the whole process from scratch. I said yes; otherwise I would be someone who had no dream left, and without dreams I would not want to live.

ecstatic truth. I've always tried to strive for a much deeper truth in the images, in cinema, in storytelling, on a screen, so whether I've achieved it or not remains to be seen. . . . There are short fleeting moments when I know that I have achieved it. And to work for that and to strive for it and to try, gives at least some dignity and some meaning to my existence.

Get used to the bear behind you.

I'm making films for an audience out there and a very tiny fraction of them are would-be filmmakers. But let's speak of them-the would-be filmmakers, the tiny fraction. I've witnessed many times when I've showed films and was present at a screening that exactly those people feel very much encouraged by what I'm doing.