Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir

by Werner Herzog

I can vaguely remember our mother assembling us, our friends as well, to watch her shoot through a thick beech log with her pistol. At the back side of it, the wood was splintered, torn apart by the projectile. We were so blown away, there needed no speeches. We understood. From that moment on, it was clear that never in our lives would we aim a weapon, loaded or not, at a living person. We wouldn’t even level toy guns at one another.

I was asked if I still had the strength to reshoot the film. I said that if this film failed all my dreams would be at an end, and I didn’t want to live as a man without dreams.

I always wanted to direct a Hamlet and have all the parts played by ex-champion livestock auctioneers; I wanted the performance to come in at under fourteen minutes.

What the truth is is something none of us knows anyway, not even the philosophers or the mathematicians or the pope in Rome. I never see the truth as a fixed star on the horizon but always as an activity, a search, an approximation.