I didn't know how to calm him down, and then I had an inspiration. I went to my hut, where, for months I had hidden a piece of chocolate. We would almost have killed one another for something like that. I went back to him, going right into his face and ate the chocolate. All of a sudden he was quiet. This was utterly…

I find it interesting that there are impostors out on the Internet pretending to be 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.

Once a German, always a German.

Everyone who makes films has to be an athlete to a certain degree because cinema does not come from abstract academic thinking; it comes from your knees and thighs.

If you switch on television it's just ridiculous and its destructive. It kills us. And talk shows will kill us. They kill our language. So we have to declare holy war against what we see every single day on television. Commercials and – I think there should be real war against commercials, real war against talk shows,…

Tell me about an encounter with a squirrel.

I don't spend sleepless nights over getting very bad reviews.

I would travel down to Hell and wrestle a film away from the devil if it was necessary.

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

Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates.

For me a chair is a chair — and I do not reference to other possibilities. For me, a man is a man. I cannot distinguish a gay man from a straight man… After 35 years of knowing John Waters I turn to my wife and I said to her, ‘I have the feeling that this man is gay'.

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.