Werner Herzog Quotes

I'm always wondering, if Bigfoot's not real, then why does this creature show up in all these different cultures? I'm always fascinated by that kind of stuff.

I went to volcanoes where I knew that there was a lot of mythology around them; there was something like the creation of gods and monsters and demons.

Vampires have always been hot. They are one of our most durable monsters. It's one of those stories that galvanizes us early and it's always going on.

When I wrote 'The Good Fairies of New York,' I wasn't really imagining that there were fairies. Not in the way that I'm really imagining there are werewolves.

I still don't understand what a sea god would be doing in Atlanta." Leo snorted. "What's a wine god doing in Kansas? Gods are weird.

Myths are stories about people who become too big for their lives temporarily, so that they crash into other lives or brush against gods. In crisis their souls are visible.

North Korea is not an exception. Even there, where you think it would be completely sober, they have the myth of their revolution being connected to the volcano.

I've always loved fairy tales and magic - especially twisting them on their ears and poor trolls have always had such a bad rep.

It's not far-fetched that almost everywhere in the world where you have volcanoes you have mythologies or new gods being created.

Santa Claus is a god. He's no less a god than Ahura Mazda, or Odin, or Zeus. Think of the white beard, the chariot pulled through the air by a breed of animal which doesn't ordinarily fly, the prayers (requests for gifts) which are annually mailed to him and which so baffle the Post Office, the specially-garbed priests in all the department stories. And don't gods reflect their creators' society? The Greeks had a huntress goddess, and gods of agriculture and war and love. What else would we have but a god of giving, of merchandising, and of consumption?

Storytelling is our oldest form of remembering the promises we have made to one another and to our various gods, and the promises given in return; it is a way of recording our human emotions and desires and taboos.

As for the "anger" of the volcano, we leave it up to the local populations who create their demons, their gods and their divine punishment.

Vampires are make-believe, like elves, gremlins, and eskimos.

And, before science had caught up with the legend, the legend had swallowed science and everything.

After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth'.

I liked myths. They weren't adult stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than that. They just were.

It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.

[M]yths are not invented as stories are. Myths are inspired-they really are. They come from the same realm that dream comes from.

With vampires, there is such a great tradition that you suddenly find yourself a part of. Each generation reinvents what that means to them.

There are photos of Kim Jong-un right up atop the volcano. I actually wrote a letter to him asking if I could speak on camera. I never got an answer. But what was interesting was the people who were responsible for us, our "guards," it took them two days to figure out how I should address him. "President? No, you can't because there's a president for eternity." And it was a time when his status was still in flux. Only a few months later there was this party congress which assigned an official title to him, but that was after we did our film.

Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world.

It's very strange, for example, in North Korea where the volcano at the Chinese border is some sort of the mythical birthplace of the Korean people.

...belief has a second edge. If there are ten thousand medieval peasants who create vampires by believing them real, there may be one - probably a child - who will imagine the stake necessary to kill it. But a stake is only stupid wood; the mind is the mallet which drives it home.

When we stop believing in gods we can start believing in their stories, I retort. There are of course no such things as miracles, but if there were and so tomorrow we woke up to find no more believers on earth, no more devout Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, why then, sure the beauty of the stories would be a thing we could focus on because they wouldn't be dangerous any more, they would become capable of compelling the only belief that leads to truth, that is, the willing, disbelieving of the reader in a well-told tale.

Fairies in Ireland are sometimes as big as we are, sometimes bigger, and sometimes, as I have been told, about three feet high.