Werner Herzog Quotes

I get my inspiration from books, pictures, art. I might find a vintage scarf and say, "I think this should be our color palette."

Let those who drink not, but austerely dine, dry up in law; the Muses smell of wine.

Just as art brings you to another place, so does religion - and to ask questions of factuality tends to reduce both. If you say you were inspired by a novel, that implies that your book is a work of fiction.

When I studied with Nicholas Ray he was always telling us, "If you want to make films, watch a lot of films, but don't just watch films, go take a walk, look at the sky, read a book about meteorology, look at the design of people's shoes. Because all of them are part of filmmaking." So I thought, perfect! That's a good job for me.

I personally just love movies about the creative process.

I'm just trying to tell a good story and make thought-provoking, entertaining films. I just try and draw upon the great culture we have as a people, from music, novels, the streets.

All of my heroes, like Dali, are people who pioneered various forms of cinema.

I was influenced by Ray Harryhausen and Lotte Reiniger, with her twitchy, cutout animation, which I happened to see at a very young age, but also by the Warner Bros. cartoons, 'Tom and Jerry,' and of course Disney. And also by Fellini's 'Giulietta of the Spirits' and Kurosawa's 'Ran.' And by other American illustrators and painters.

I love film - it's like painting.

I loved 'Just Kids' by Patti Smith.

There are so many artists that have inspired me.

While I was thinking about the next film to do, I was also reading this book by Diane Ackerman called 'The Natural History of the Senses' - an anthropological and sociological look at the senses. But it also has this great sense of enthusiasm.

I see a lot of art; we see a lot of music, films at Sundance... that influences me and informs me more than theater just because I make a bigger effort to see other art forms.

When I was in college, I wanted to study film. My first passion was to be a cinematographer. So maybe there's something innate in my music where it partners well with images.

Artwork, films, TV - it's always informed my work, no matter what I'm working on.

If there's one thing that I've learned from both Spike Lee and Tarantino, it's that you can wear your influences on your sleeve but at the same time invoke new energy and new flavor.

I try to find inspiration in books, paintings, illustrations and the one thing I try to avoid is just being inspired by other movies, because then you just are talking about movies in movies. I try to talk about movies that are culturally and spiritually a little more diverse.

One of the springs of poetry is joy.

All my art is in some way about other art, even if the other art is cartoons.

I don't believe that crime, danger and poverty make for good art. That's bullshit.

That's what great art does - it inspires other artists to do great art, and that's what it should do.

No art goes unmediated by other art.

When we come to understand architecture as the essential nature of all harmonious structure we will see that it is the architecture of music that inspired Bach and Beethoven, the architecture of painting that is inspiring Picasso as it inspired Velasquez, that it is the architecture of life itself that is the inspiration of the great poets and philosophers.

Many books that you read, they have those disclaimers that say that, "None of the events and none of the people are based on real life" and so on... Well, I don't believe that. I think that as human beings many people touch us, especially people we love the most and we can't help but do character sketches when we go to our art.

I've got to give my brother a lot of credit because he's always introduced me to a lot of things and those films spiked an interest of, "Wow, this is an incredible world, how do you be a part of that?" That definitely helped me through my school years of doing theater.