Klaus Kinski quotes

Westerns. One after another. They get shittier and shittier, and the so-called directors get lousier and lousier. And the more incompetent they are, the more hostile they act.

The film was appropriately called Venom and Klaus seemed determined to live up to its name... From what I was able to glean, the only excuse for his domestic outbursts sprang from his daughter, Nastassja Kinski, being on a roll. After Polanski's Tess, she became the new darling of Hollywood, courted, caressed and cast wherever she went. I believe Klaus was actually envious of his own offsping.

I've written a book about [Kinski's abuse] because I can no longer bear the fact that a person whose halo gets bigger from year to year is being glorified in this way.

At first, I felt this thing coming up in myself, just really physically growing in myself and happening, but it was a jungle, so I couldn't distinguish things so much. I knew there were, in myself, the souls of millions of people who lived centuries ago - not just people but animals, plants, the elements, things, even, matter - that all of these exist in me, and I felt this. OK, this pushed and pushed and pushed. OK, that was the beginning... And through the years it became clearer and clearer, this thing; it started to separate itself. I could make it come when I had to concentrate on, let's say, a person I had to become - this thing became stronger. And took more of me. In this moment, I let it do it, because I wanted, I had to be this person. And as I was led to doing it, there was then no way back. And the more I tried to do it, the more I hated it. But there was no way back anymore; it was always going farther and farther and farther. Until one day, when I was walking through the streets of Paris, I started crying, because I could look at a man, a woman, a dog, anything, and receive it, anything, everything; there was no difference between physical and psychological. I felt like I was breaking out, breaking up, receiving everything, every moment, even things I did not see. There is no turning back from this. But this danger is the power you have. It is this same power that lets you hold an audience when you are on a stage. Then it is a concentration, the same concentration that in kung fu is used for the kick that kills or to break a table with your hand. It means that you are sure of the power and that you relinquish yourself to it

I saw Stay as You Are and Tess only. I didn't ask her if she saw every movie I did. I could never think about that. Why do I have to see every movie she did? Why? Sometimes she did movies with people I was bored by. I don't care about this or that director. So if she is so beautiful in a movie, it is because of her, not a director. So why should I see the movie then? As long as I am not blind, I don't need a dog to see. If I am blind, maybe I would like the dog to lead me. I am not blind. I don't have to see her movies. I know my child.

I have made many things wrong in my life. I should have made many things better in my life, not only to Nastassja but many things. If someone said to me, 'You did everything wrong in your life,' I would say, 'Okay, maybe you're right.' But my way is the only way I can exist. I can feel and express things to understand how true somethings is. People in my life have tried to change me, and I have blown up even more violently and I said, 'What, do you really want to distort me?' What's left, you have to do it your way. I don't need a Bible to tell me I'm doing wrong a hundred million times in my life. Everything I did wrong in my life I am suffering a long time. It's coming back and back and back and back to me for years. I am not ashamed to tell myself what I am doing wrong, but there must always be a way to understand that's all I can do. What I want to say is I tried, okay, I tried, and I'm not breaking my head that it's not happened. It's like a growing plant. This tiny things is coming out, you can feel it coming out, it's breaking through, so it may be one day that she will understand many more things than she understands today. Nobody can come to me and say, 'Why haven't you seen this and why and why.' I know what I have to do.

Mr. Kinski had died, and they quoted me in his obituary, confirming that he had a reputation as being difficult with directors. First I felt awful. You die and your obituary should list your accomplishments, and here I was trashing the man. And then I remembered what a mean bastard he'd been to me. This was just karma biting him in the ass. This was my revenge. But you know what I really wish? I wish his obituary had quoted me saying what a compelling actor he was, how great he was to watch. He really was great to watch.

I am not the official Church Jesus who is accepted by policemen, bankers, judges, executioners, officers, church bosses, politicians and similar representatives of power. I am not your Superstar who keeps playing his part for you on the cross, and whom you hit in the face when he steps out of his role, and who therefore cannot call out to you, "I am fed up with all your pomp and all your rituals! Your incense is disgusting. It stinks of burnt human flesh. I can't bear your holy celebrations and holidays any longer. You can pray as much as you like, I'm not listening. Keep all your idiotic honours and laudations. I won't have anything to do with them. I do not want them. I am no pillar of peace and security. Security that you achieve with tear gas and with billy clubs. I am no guarantee for obedience and order either. Order and obedience at reform schools, prisons, penal institutions, insane asylums. I am the disobedient one, the restless one who does not live in any house. Nor am I a guarantee for success, savings accounts and possessions. I am the homeless one without a permanent home who stirs up trouble wherever he goes. I am the agitator, the invoker, I am the scream. I am the hippie, bum, Black Power, Jesus people. I want to free the prisoners. I want to make the blind see. I want to redeem the tortured. I want to cast love into your hearts, the love that reaches out beyond everything that exists. I want to turn you into living human beings, immortals."

If I hadn't refused Ken Russell, Fellini and Spielberg and made their movies when they asked me, my life would be no different. It is not my fault that I accepted one movie and turned down another. I don't see any point in defending myself, either.

The street kid in me says, "Grab the money and run - who cares who it's from! Don't think about whatever you have to do for it or when you have to do it!"

The German government writes me that it has awarded me the supreme distinction for an actor: the Gold Film Ribbon. What gall! Who gave those shitheads the right to award me anything? Did it never occur to them that there might be somebody who doesn't want their shit? What filthy arrogance to award me - me, of all people! - a prize! What does this prize mean, anyway? Is it a reward? For what? For my pains, sufferings, despair, tears? A prize for every hell, every dying, every resurrection? Prizes for death and life? Prizes for passion, for hate and love? And how did you shitheads intend to hand me the prize? As a gift? As a favour, like those tasteless hosts that the pope distributes like fast food? I'll kick you! Or do I come submissive, whimpering? I'll kick you again! And there's note even a check. It's outrageous!

I have never met a man like my father. He is so mad, terrible and vehement at the same time. Because of him, I never knew anything other than passion. When I began to meet other people I saw that it wasn’t normal.

Werner, nobody will read this book if I don't write bad stuff about you. If I wrote that we get along well together, nobody would buy it. The scum only wants to hear about the dirt, all the time.

Sometimes, my heart hurts so much, I beat it with my fists. I try to run. But you cannot run away from this. You cannot run from it. Wherever you run, it waits for you. Even when you think you have escaped it, it is there, where you have run to. It waits for you, to ambush you. It is like those vines called lianas, those tropical creepers that grow around you and strangle you. You cut off one branch, but there is another that grows. You leap over the wall of one ghetto and find yourself in another ghetto.

... I would have been better than Adolf Hitler. I could have delivered his speeches a lot better... that's for certain.

At a performance everything works out on its own. I've solved the mystery: You have to submit silently. Open up, let go. Let anything penetrate you, even the most painful things. Endure. Bear up. That's the magic key! The text comes by itself, and its meaning shakes the soul. Everything else is taken care of by the life one has to live without sparing oneself. You mustn't let scar tissue form on your wounds; you have to keep ripping them open in oder to turn your insides into a marvelous instrument that is capable of anything. All this has its price. I become so sensitive that I can't live under normal conditions. That's why the hours between performances are worst.

If I was doing a movie that was really bad, I always realized that I had to play my role as good as possible when the camera was on me. The fact that the movie was total shit did not bother me. For example, let's say that there's a hand that is used to playing the violin excellently. Let's say that hand belongs to the world's greatest violinist. But, the man finds himself out of work. Someone tells him "I don't have a job for a violinist but I do have a job for someone who is willing to carry out trash." The violinist takes the job. He has to do his new job well or else he won't get paid. He won't eat. Although his hand is forced to carry garbage, that doesn't diminish the skill of the hand.

Kinski was not an actor - I wouldn't call him an artist either, nor am I. Of course, he mastered the techniques of being an actor, the technique of speech, of understanding the presence of light and of the camera, the choreography of camera and of bodily movements... But at the core of Klaus Kinski was not his existence as an actor - he was something beyond that and apart from it.

Why do I continue making movies? Making movies is better than cleaning toilets.

Herzog is a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money-hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, cowardly creep. His so-called "talent" consists of nothing but tormenting helpless creatures and, if necessary, torturing them to death or simply murdering them. He doesn't care about anyone or anything except his career as a so-called filmmaker. Driven by a pathological addiction to sensationalism, he creates the most sensless difficulties and dangers, risking other people's safety and even their lives — just so he can eventually say that he, Herzog, has beaten seemingly unbeatable odds. For his movies he hires retards and amateurs whom he can push around (and alledgedly hypnotize!), and he pays them starvation wages or zilch. He also uses freaks and cripples of every conceivable size and shape, merely to look interesting. He doesn't have the foggiest inkling of how to make movies. He doesn't even try to direct the actors anymore. Long ago, when I ordered him to keep his trap shut, he gave up asking me whether I'm willing to carry out his stupid and boring ideas.