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I am someone who takes everything very literally. I simply do not understand irony, a defect I have had ever since I was able to think independently.

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
Thinking
Takes
Since
Understand
Defect
Someone
Independently
Able
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Ever
Irony
Everything
Literally
Think
Simply

More quotes by Werner Herzog

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Gaining trust is not difficult for me. I needed to gain the trust of the North Korean supervisors.
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Of course subjects are changing, and since I started so early in filmmaking, I did my first film at age 19, of course you grow up with your films and you are not trotting the same path all the time.
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Only the poets can hold the country together, and I wanted to hold Germany together.
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The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.
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Well, it had to be about the stories and the people who live under the volcano, what kind of new gods do they create? What sort of demons? And of course North Korea falls clearly into this category since the socialist revolution at the end of the Second World War. Somehow they adopted the myth of the power and dynamics of their volcano.
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Maybe I should stay a good soldier of cinema.
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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.
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I wouldn't make a connection between the daily news and volcanoes.
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I believe the common denominator of the Universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.
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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.
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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 right to insist they react in a particular way. A film is just a projection of light, completed only when it crosses the gaze of the audience[...]
Werner Herzog
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I like and I love everything that has to do with cinema, writing, directing, editing, creating music, and even acting.
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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[This kind of strange mythology about me.] I've pulled a huge steamboat over a mountain I've done a feature film with all the actors acting under hypnosis - things that are very unusual.
Werner Herzog
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Coincidences always happen if you keep your mind open, while storyboards remain the instruments of cowards who do not trust in their own imagination and who are slaves of a matrix If you get used to planning your shots based solely on aesthetics, you are never that far from kitsch.
Werner Herzog
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All of a sudden it's twelve-year-olds who are contacting me, fifteen-year-olds, and they have very, very fascinating questions. However, they speak in a language of their age group which I have to learn first.
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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If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big color photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer. Such vulgarity is healthy and safe.
Werner Herzog
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The wonderful thing is that Clive [Oppenheimer ] insisted on training his camera - his private camera - on me at one point. We were discussing things such as how to avoid certain dangers, while reflecting on a volcano that had threatened to explode 40 years ago.
Werner Herzog
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We are just a blip. I found it very interesting when Clive [Oppenheimer] interviewed the Ethiopian scientists and asked them, Do we have another 100,000 years? In their calculation, mankind will be entering a very critical phrase a thousand years from now.
Werner Herzog