Quote

I could not become an American citizen. I would not like to become a citizen of a country that has capital punishment.

Werner Herzog

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Like
Citizen
Capital
Punishment
Citizens
American
Become
Country
Would

More quotes by Werner Herzog

Image
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
Image
I function better in the jungle in Amazonia or Antarctica or Alaska or the Sahara desert. An artificial environment like a studio has never attracted me. I could work in a studio, but I would never really feel at home.
Werner Herzog
Image
I know what I'm talking about and I've never been over budget, in 70 films.
Werner Herzog
Image
It's all movies for me. And besides, when you say documentaries, in my case, in most of these cases, means feature film in disguise.
Werner Herzog
Image
If you don’t have a deal in two days, you won’t have a deal in two years.
Werner Herzog
Image
Spirit of immersion and curiosity and awe and participation is something which Timothy Treadwell and I have in common.
Werner Herzog
Image
I'm one of the few reading and thinking people who loves Las Vegas for the vulgarity and omnipresence of the dream. The collective dream. There's something enormous about it. Let me say one thing: Las Vegas and cinema have similar roots. The country fair. The magician at the country fair. The vulgarity of the country fair.
Werner Herzog
Image
Tourism is a mortal sin.
Werner Herzog
Image
I wouldn't like to travel at all. I've been too much around.
Werner Herzog
Image
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
Image
The paintings are not just on flat walls - you have these enormous niches, bulges and protrusions, as well as stalactites and stalagmites. The effect of the three-dimensionality is phenomenal. It's a real drama which the artists of the time understood, and they used it for the drama of their paintings.
Werner Herzog
Image
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
Image
Our presence on this planet does not seem to be sustainable. Our technical civilization makes up particularly vulnerable. There is talk all over the scientific community about climate change. Many of them [scientists] agree, the end of human life on earth is assured.
Werner Herzog
Image
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.
Werner Herzog
Image
The punishment itself is something I respectfully disagree with, but for thousands and thousands of years it was practiced everywhere.
Werner Herzog
Image
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
Image
Perseverance has kept me going over the years. Things rarely happen overnight. Filmmakers should be prepared for many years of hard work. The sheer toil can be healthy and exhilarating.
Werner Herzog
Image
You have to be completely open to what people would tell you. You do not shape them you do not force the materials into your ideas. You have to have all windows and doors open.
Werner Herzog
Image
Facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.
Werner Herzog
Image
It's curiosity, and always a sense of poetry. You see it in particular in the chapter Iceland where I'm reciting ancient Icelandic poetry. It has this very beautiful gravitas in conjunction with the volcanoes.
Werner Herzog