My films are about as anthropological as the music of Gesualdo and the images of Caspar David Friedrich. They are anthropological only in as much as they try to explore the human condition at this particular time on this planet. I do not make films using images only of clouds and trees, I work with human beings because the way they function in different cultural groups interests me. If that makes me an anthropologist then so be it. But I never think in terms of strict ethnography: going out to some distant island with the explicit purpose of studying the natives there. My goal is always to find out more about man himself, and film is my means. According to its nature, film does not have so much to do with reality as it does with our collective dreams. It chronicles our state of mind. The purpose is to record and guide, as chroniclers did in past centuries.

Werner Herzog
from Herzog on Herzog