By Klaus Kinski
“There isn’t one role I’d like to play. There are many and there are none. I’ve always admitted to being a prostitute. I sell myself for monsy. I don’t have to see myself up on the screen to feel satisfied about a movie. If you pay me a lot of money, I’ll be in your film.”
— “Klaus Kinski : The Master of Screen Depravity Speaks”, Fangoria #28
“ASSHOLES! Do you ask a car crash for another take? Do you ask a volcano for another take? Do you ask the storm for another take?”
— “Klaus Kinski & The Thing”, Playboy (USA) November 1985
“Yeah, I’ve got violence in me, but no negative violence. My violence is the violence of the free man who refuses to knuckle under. Creation is violent. Life is violent. Birth is a violent process. Tempests and earthquakes are violent movements of nature. My violence is the violence of life. It is not violence against nature, like the violence of the state, which sends your kids to the slaughterhouse, deadens your minds, and drives out your souls!”
— “Kinski Uncut: The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski”
“Herzog is a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money-hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, cowardly creep… He doesn’t care about anyone or anything except his career as a so-called filmmaker… 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.”
— “Kinski Uncut”
“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.”
— As quoted by Werner Herzog, in “My Best Fiend” (1999)
Or, on the other hand…
“[Herzog is] a highly talented guy. He does very good movies and he’s not the sort of person who always talks in bullshit. He does many, many things right. But he’s also sick. Obsessed. He wants to make history, not movies. Anyone who wants to make history is stupid.”
— “Klaus Kinski : The Master of Screen Depravity Speaks”
About Klaus Kinski
“He had eyes like hell and the sky at the same time.”
— Nastassja Kinski
“Living with him was like being on stage, every day and night, in Kafka. He was extremely jealous. It was as if he had built a private religion around us: Madonna and Child.”
— Brigitte Kinski
“When he died I had a moment of grief that lasted about five minutes. It was very intense, then never again. Not because I forced myself, but I think it was because he caused us too much pain.”
— Nastassja Kinski
“I don’t know why other producers have had difficulties with Klaus Kinski. As long as you pay his wages on time you don’t have any problems with him.”
— Erwin C Dietrich
“Preliminary diagnosis: Schizophrenia. Conclusion: Psychopathy. His speech is violent. In this, his self-centred and incorrigible personality is evident as one that can’t blend in civil circumstances. He remains consistent to his egocentric world view and declares all others prejudiced […] The patient hasn’t had a job in one year, but still speaks confidently of the new film in which he will star.”
— Psychiatric report, 1950