Werner Herzog

I live my life outside of the glitz and glamour of the red carpet events, and so you'll never see me there. I'm never at parties.

Every man should pull a boat over a mountain once in his life.

You must live life in its very elementary forms. The Mexicans have a very nice word for it: pura vida. It doesn't mean just purity of life, but the raw, stark-naked quality of life. And that's what makes young people more into a filmmaker than academia.

Life on our planet has been a constant series of cataclysmic events, and we are more suitable for extinction than a trilobite or a reptile. So we will vanish. There's no doubt in my heart.

I never have searched for a subject. They always just come along. They never come by way of decision-making. They just haunt me. I can't get rid of them. I did not invite them.

If you do not have an absolutely clear vision of something, where you can follow the light to the end of the tunnel, then it doesn't matter whether you're bold or cowardly, or whether you're stupid or intelligent. Doesn't get you anywhere.

I prefer to be alive, so I'm cautious about taking risks.

If an actor knows how to milk a cow, I always know it will not be difficult to be in business with him.

Why go to Antarctica, why do a film like 'Grizzly Man'? It's the sheer joy of storytelling - it's the urge.

I think there should be holy war against yoga classes.

I think there are specific times where film noir is a natural concomitant of the mood. When there's insecurity, collapse of financial systems - that's where film noir always hits fertile ground.

I think it is a quest of literature throughout the ages to describe the human condition.