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Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.

Werner Herzog

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Werner Herzog
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: September 5
Author
Cinematographer
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Editor
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Voice Actor
München
Werner Herzog Stipetić
Werner Stipetić
Darkness
Deep
Layer
Upon
Layers
Like
Thin
Ice
Chaos
Ocean
Civilization

More quotes by Werner Herzog

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It seems odd, but people who see my films normally take them in in a deeper way than you would actually watch a film, let's say The Terminator or whatever.
Werner Herzog
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I think psychology and self-reflection is one of the major catastrophes of the twentieth century.
Werner Herzog
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It's funny how in the long time of me working in various countries and various situations that there is this kind of idea out in the media that I am a daredevil and that I risk the lives of everyone around me, but nobody ever gets hurt on my shoot. Some crew members sometimes, but the actors are OK.
Werner Herzog
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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.
Werner Herzog
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Ambition is to be the fastest runner on this planet, to be the first on the South Pole, which is a grotesque perversion of ambition. It's an ego trip, and I'm not on an ego trip. I don't have ambitions - I have a vision.
Werner Herzog
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I despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality to be very base and vile. I would much rather eat potato chips on the sidewalk.
Werner Herzog
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The internet doesn't have any qualities, technical qualities. It's just fast, reaching out everywhere and so, it can process that and that volume of data flows and so, but it doesn't have any qualities like good or bad or ethical or non-ethical. It's humans, it's us, not the internet.
Werner Herzog
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Maybe I should stay a good soldier of cinema.
Werner Herzog
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It doesn't matter whether you shoot on celluloid or on digital, you better make a good film.
Werner Herzog
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I don't care whether the person is guilty or not guilty. It's not my business to establish guilt or innocence. It's a court of law that does that and a jury does that, but not me.
Werner Herzog
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I find it interesting that there are impostors out on the Internet pretending to be Werner Herzog.
Werner Herzog
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In my films, I hope there are a few moments where you feel almost illuminated, like in a state of ecstasy, stepping out of yourself, beyond yourself and perceiving something which is only, in the case of cinema, possible in collective dreams.
Werner Herzog
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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 strongman, I'm sure it would have larger audiences, but it wouldn't have the same substance.
Werner Herzog
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I do have a clear vision, and I do see things that are existing in my quote-unquote spirit, but that doesn't necessary make me a very spiritual person.
Werner Herzog
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Strangely enough, there's this mythology sprouting out that I cannot stop.
Werner Herzog
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May I propose a Herzog dictum? Those who read own the world, and those who watch television lose it.
Werner Herzog
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Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates.
Werner Herzog
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We are surrounded by worn-out, banal, useless and exhausted images, limping and dragging themselves behind the rest of our cultural evolution.
Werner Herzog
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You are in a place that has not been seen for tens of thousands of years, because it was so sealed off. There is such silence that when you hold your breath you can hear your own heartbeat. Everything is so fresh that you have the sensation that the painters have merely retreated deeper into the dark and that they are looking at you.
Werner Herzog
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There's more substance in my prose and my poetry than in all my films together. Writing is a more direct way of expressing yourself because, in cinema, you always have finances, organization, actors, technical apparatus and all that stuff coming in between.
Werner Herzog