23 Great Werner Herzog Quotes In All Of Their Unabashed Glory

What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams.

Like Dreams

Werner Herzog  

Do you not then hear this horrible scream all around you that people usually call silence.

You

Werner Herzog  

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

Death Art

Werner Herzog  

Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world.

You Will

Werner Herzog  

People think we had a love-hate relationship. Well, I did not love him, nor did I hate him. We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other's murder.

Love Think Relationship I

Werner Herzog  

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

Werner Herzog  

In the face of the obscene, explicit malice of the jungle, which lacks only dinosaurs as punctuation, I feel like a half-finished, poorly expressed sentence in a cheap novel.

Like I

Werner Herzog  

Read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read, read...if you don't read, you will never be a filmmaker.

You Never Will

Werner Herzog  

I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony; but chaos, hostility and murder.

Believe I

Werner Herzog  

May I propose a Herzog dictum? those who read own the world, and those who watch television lose it.

I

Werner Herzog  

There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.

Werner Herzog  

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

Me Money Like

Werner Herzog  

If you’re purely after facts, please buy yourself the phone directory of Manhattan. It has four million times correct facts. But it doesn’t illuminate.

Yourself

Werner Herzog  

I'm quite convinced that cooking is the only alternative to film making. Maybe there's also another alternative, that's walking on foot.

Werner Herzog  

A fairly young, intelligent-looking man with long hair asked me whether filming or being filmed could do harm, whether it could destroy a person. In my heart the answer was yes, but I said no.

Me Heart Young I

Werner Herzog  

Nothing I have witnessed, from lava to crustacean, assailed me liked the caked debris haunting that small plastic soap hammock in the smaller of the bathrooms. Nausea is not a sufficient word.

Me I

Werner Herzog  

One more thing: Philippe, you are not a coward-so what I want to hear from you is the ecstatic truth about the twin towers.

You I

Werner Herzog  

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.

You Art

Werner Herzog  

Truth itself wanders through the forests.

Werner Herzog  

In the evening I finished reading a book, and because I was feeling so alone, I buried the book on the edge of the forest with a borrowed spade.

Alone I

Werner Herzog  

At the market I ate a piece of a grilled monkey—it looked like a naked child.

Like I

Werner Herzog  

For such an advanced civilization as ours to be without images that are adequate to it is as serious a defect as being without memory.

Werner Herzog