Werner Herzog

2,000 philosophers in a survey couldn't give a clear answer.

Nobody has it.

But I know it's a quest that is human.

A voyage, an expedition, hardship, a search.

But we must not abandon this search, even though we never will exactly know what truth is.

It has to do with art per se.

I think every artist...

sooner or later is confronted with the question of truth.

It comes inevitably at you.

Filmmaker, painter, writer, poet, it doesn't matter.

It will come at you.

I've always seen the deepest insights, the deepest illumination, when it was not only carried by facts.

I always use this as an example.

Until recently, you had the Manhattan phone directory, half a foot thick, with four and a half million entries, all of them factually correct, but it doesn't illuminate you.

So it's not the book of books.

The phone directory is the accountant's truth.

But doing films or being a poet, you have to do something that illuminates you.

And very often you have to depart from the facts.

You have to go into ecstasies.

You have to step outside of your own self.