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Quote by Werner Herzog

“Some of the most important caves, like Lascaux in the Dordogne region in France, have had to be closed down. There had been too many people allowed in, and they left a mold on the walls that is spreading and which can't really be stopped.”

Quote by Werner Herzog

Author

German film director known for his unique style and profound thematic explorations. His notable works include 'Aguirre, the Wrath of God' and 'Wings of Desire'. more

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“You have to realize that, about 20,000 years ago, there was a cataclysmic event when an entire rock face collapsed and sealed off the cave. It's a completely preserved time capsule. You've got tracks of cave bears that look like they were left yesterday, and you've got the footprint of a boy who was probably eight years old next to the footprint of a wolf.”

Years Looks Faces Next Left Realizing Boys Rocks Events Bears Years Ago Track Eight Yesterday Caves Footprint Time Capsules

Author:Werner Herzog

“I can scarcely manage to scribble a tolerable English letter. I know that I am not a scholar, but meantime I am aware that no man living knows better than I do the habits of our birds.”

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Book:Audubon and His Journals

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“The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis, and those crises are often very intimate also.”

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“You are in a place that has not been seen for tens of thousands of years, because it was so sealed off. There is such silence that when you hold your breath you can hear your own heartbeat. Everything is so fresh that you have the sensation that the painters have merely retreated deeper into the dark and that they are looking at you.”

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Author:Werner Herzog

“This is the birth of the modern human soul. The artists are like us, not like the Neanderthals, who had no culture - and who incidentally were still roaming the landscape at the time the paintings were made. It is striking that there is a distant cultural echo that seems to reach all the way down to us, over dozens of millennia.”

Way Humans Made Stills Soul Seems Artist Culture Modern Painting Birth Made It Landscape Dozen Echoes Human Soul Roaming Neanderthals

Author:Werner Herzog

“In the Chauvet Cave, there is a painting of a bison embracing the lower part of a naked female body. Why does Pablo Picasso, who had no knowledge of the Chauvet Cave, use exactly the same motif in his series of drawings of the Minotaur and the woman? Very, very strange.”

Doe Use Body Strange Painting Female Series Drawing Naked Caves Female Body Motifs Minotaur Bison

Author:Werner Herzog

“The paintings are not just on flat walls - you have these enormous niches, bulges and protrusions, as well as stalactites and stalagmites. The effect of the three-dimensionality is phenomenal. It's a real drama which the artists of the time understood, and they used it for the drama of their paintings.”

Wells Real Used Artist Three Effects Painting Wall Drama Understood Enormous Flats Niche Phenomenal

Author:Werner Herzog

“I am somebody who creates images, with my perspectives, fascinations and my instincts as a narrator. You have to activate the audience's imagination. If you are just giving them scientific results, they would forget the film in five minutes flat.”

Ifs Giving Film Imagination Forget Results Audience Five Minutes Perspective Instinct Flats Five Minutes Fascination Narrators Activate

Author:Werner Herzog

“There are many Americans who regardless of the intelligence or the profound political persuasion of a figure will never vote for a black man. Not all of them are racists; some are skeptical, and some are suspicious.”

Men Political Black Figures Vote Profound Racist Persuasion Suspicious Skeptical

Author:Michael Eric Dyson

“America certainly has made extraordinary progress. The collective unconscious of the nation has certainly shifted as a result of the civil rights movement and the developments in the '70s and '80s. We have witnessed a great expansion of the black middle class.”