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The Universe Is Not Harmonious: You Know That By Looking Outside.
-Werner Herzog
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The Universe Is Not

Werner Herzog
...
The Universe Is Not Harmonious: You Know That By Looking Outside.

Understanding the Quote: "the universe is not harmonious: you know that by looking outside...."

This quote by Werner Herzog reflects deeply on the theme of harmonious. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Harmonious, Knows, Universe, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Werner Herzog interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog is celebrated for insightful thoughts on harmonious and knows. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Harmonious
Knows
Universe
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Of Course The Entire Planet Earth Consists Of Magma Under Us, And Only The Very Inner-core Is Different.
Different
Earth
Magma
We Haven't Seen A Real Volcanic Event At Least In 74,000 Years - [mount Toba] In Indonesia, In Sumatra, Where The Crater Itself Is 100 Kilometers Across. It Was So Monumental, What Happened, That For A Very Long Time The Entire Atmosphere Of Our Planet Was Darkened. It's Not The Lava And The Heat Per Se; It's The Obscuring Of The Entire Atmosphere, And It Made It Very Difficult For The Human Race To Survive.
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At The Press Conference For The Film He Impressed Everyone With His Complete Sincerity And Innocence. He Said He Had Come To See The Sea For The First Time And Marveled At How Clean It Was. Someone Told Him That, In Fact, It Wasn't. 'when The World Is Emptied Of Human Beings' He Said, 'it Will Become So Again
Sea
World
Firsts
I'm Very, Very Curious About How People Live Under The Volcano, How They Handle The Permanence Of Danger.
Volcanoes
People
Curious
We Are Not Accountants, We Are Not Accountants Who Do Number After Number After Number Of Storyboard Images, A Robot Could Do It Ultimately, But What I'm Doing A Robot Cannot Do.
Numbers
Robots
Accountants
Everything You See In North Korea, It's All Propaganda, But It's All Connected To The Volcano.
Volcanoes
Korea
Propaganda
We Are Just A Blip. I Found It Very Interesting When Clive [oppenheimer] Interviewed The Ethiopian Scientists And Asked Them, "do We Have Another 100,000 Years?" In Their Calculation, Mankind Will Be Entering A Very Critical Phrase A Thousand Years From Now.
Years
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Phrases
I Prefer The Material Woman.
Materials
Once In A While I Come Across A Director Who Hasgrown Up Thousands Of Miles From Me, And The Work Touches Me.through These Issues/50/images I Am Connected And Something Is Illuminated.and I Know Then That I Am Not Alone.
Issues
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[tim White] Always Spoke About His Work In Terms Of Forensics, As If He Was Investigating A Crime Scene. While We Were There, They Found The Fossilized Excrement Of A Lion That Had Turned Into Stone, And We Would Immediately Start To Concoct Stories. Was It A Lion That Killed The Early Human? Of Course, The Lion Could've Been There Three Weeks Later, Or Maybe 20,000 Years Earlier.
Years
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I Like To Direct Landscapes Just As I Like To Direct Actors And Animals.
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I Was Able To Persuade Them To Let Me Shoot In Areas That Were Beyond The Volcano Itself. Beyond The Joint Scientific Program Between Cambridge University And North Korean Scientists. I Was Able To Film In A Kindergarten, Subway, Other Things You Would Not Normally Be Allowed To Do.
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Of Course, As A German, I Wouldn't Like To Tell The American People How To Handle Their Criminal Justice.
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The Rogue Film School Is Not For The Faint-hearted. It Is For Those Who Have Travelled On Foot, Who Have Worked As Bouncers In Sex Clubs Or As Wardens In A Lunatic Asylum, For Those Who Are Willing To Learn About Lock Picking Or Forging Shooting Permits In Countries Not Favoring Their Projects. In Short: For Those Who Have A Sense Of Poetry. For Those Who Are Pilgrims. For Those Who Can Tell A Story To Four Year Old Children And Hold Their Attention. For Those Who Have A Fire Burning Within. For Those Who Have A Dream.
Country
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English Is A Really Wonderful Language And I Urge You All To Investigate It
Language
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In The Face Of The Obscene, Explicit Malice Of The Jungle, Which Lacks Only Dinosaurs As Punctuation, I Feel Like A Half-finished, Poorly Expressed Sentence In A Cheap Novel.
Half
Dinosaurs
Faces
Life In The Oceans Must Be Sheer Hell. A Vast, Merciless Hell Of Permanent And Immediate Danger. So Much Of A Hell That During Evolution Some Species—including Man—crawled, Fled Onto Some Small Continents Of Solid Land, Where The Lessons Of Darkness Continue.
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I'm Talking A Lot On Financing In The Masterclass And I Know What It Means To Because I Had To Finance My First Films, All Of Them, And I Earned My Money As A Welder In A Steel Factory Doing Night Shifts While I Was Still In High School During The Day.
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I Wouldn't Like To Travel At All. I've Been Too Much Around.
Too Much
I See Planets That Don't Exist And Landscapes That Have Only Been Dreamed.
Landscape
Planets
I Like And I Love Everything That Has To Do With Cinema, Writing, Directing, Editing, Creating Music, And Even Acting.
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When The Camera Is Looking Back At Our Planet Earth, It's The Tiniest Of Specks Somewhere Out There In The Universe. So We Do Have A New Sense Of Proportion. Of Course The Volcanoes And The Magma Under Us Just Remind Us Of That.
Volcanoes
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My Non-fiction Films Are Pretty Much Fiction, Or At Least Close... It's All "movies" For Me. I Never Have Searched For A Subject. They Always Just Come Along. They Never Come By Way Of Decision-making. They Just Haunt Me. I Can't Get Rid Of Them. I Did Not Invite Them.
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I Do Not Recall To [kim Jong-un], But It Was Complex. "dear Young Leader Of The People And Chairman Of The Joint Military Commission" Or Something Like That.
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The Collapse Of The Stellar Universe Will Occur - Like Creation - In Grandiose Splendor.
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Creation
Stellar
At The End [when I Speak About] Magma Under Us Everywhere, How It's Monumentally Indifferent To Scurrying Roaches, Recoiled Reptiles, And Vapid Humans Alike. You See, You Would Never Hear Anything Like That In A National Geographic Or A Pbs Movie. This Is Clearly A Transgression When It Comes To Being Politically Correct With Your Commentary.
Pbs
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We Live In An Era When Established Values Are No Longer Valid, When Prodigious Discoveries Are Being Made Every Year, When Catastrophes Of Unbelievable Proportions Occur Weekly. In Ancient Greek The Word “chaos” Means “gaping Void” Or “yawning Emptiness.” The Most Effective Response To The Chaos In Our Lives Is The Creation Of New Forms Of Literature, Music, Poetry, Art And Cinema.
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A Fairly Young, Intelligent-looking Man With Long Hair Asked Me Whether Filming Or Being Filmed Could Do Harm, Whether It Could Destroy A Person. In My Heart The Answer Was Yes, But I Said No.
Heart
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It's Very Enigmatic Because Of Course, The Population [of North Korea] Has No Contact With The World Outside Or It's Very, Very Limited. They Don't Have Any Telephone Connections, No Radio, No Tv, No Movies, No Newspapers - Nothing From The Outside World. This Is Very Strange And There's The Very Strict, Unifying Government That Forces You To Be In Step. You See It In The Stadium Where The Spectators Create, By Flipping Cards, An Image Of The Dear Leader, Or Of The Volcano, And It's Made Of A 100,000 Human Pictures.
Government
Volcanoes
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I Am Torn Between The Beauty Of The Natural World, Which You See All Around Us, And The Idea That Some Dumb Tornado Could Blow A Telephone Pole Onto My Sweet Camaro.
Sweet
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Maybe I Should Stay A Good Soldier Of Cinema.
Soldier
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Should
What Have We Done To Our Images? What Have We Done To Our Embarrassed Landscapes? I Have Said This Before And Will Repeat It Again As Long As I Am Able To Talk: If We Do Not Develop Adequate Images We Will Die Out Like Dinosaurs.
Long
Done
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Amos Vogel Was A Mentor, A Guiding Light For Me. In His Presence, You Always Rose. But His Importance To Me Is Of Minor Significance. What Is Significant Is That With Him An Entire Epoch Ends. The Last Lion Has Left Us.i Am Still Not Capable - Or Rather Unwilling - To Understand The Fact That Amos Passed Away, Because A Man Like Him Cannot Be Dead. His Traces Are Everywhere.
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Chauvet Cave Is Rather Like The Awakening Of The Modern Human Soul Or I Would Say The Awakening Of Modern Human Culture. Because Neanderthal Men Who Still Rode The Landscape Parallel To The People Who Did These Paintings Didn't Have Culture. There's No Evidence Of Culture, No Symbolic Depiction, No Evidence Of Music, No Evidence Of Sculptures, No Evidence Of Religious Beliefs.
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I Wouldn't Make A Connection Between The Daily News And Volcanoes.
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You Have To Be Very Prudent With What You Are Doing And What Sort Of Tools You Are Utilizing. Drones Have Become A Wonderful New Tool In Filmmaking.
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There Is A Fascination About Crime, Which Is Understandable, But Hardly Anyone Talks About The Families Of Victims Of Violent Crime And The Devastation That Is Beyond The Victim Alone.
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Everything That I've Done Was Prudent And Never Has Anyone Gotten Hurt In My Films - Not A Single Actor, Not A Single Extra, Ever.
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Actors
Done
While You Are Walking You Would Learn Much More About Filmmaking Than If You Were In A Classroom. During Your Voyage You Will Learn More About What Your Future Holds Than In Five Years At Film School. Your Experiences Would Be The Very Opposite Of Academic Knowledge, For Academia Is The Death Of Cinema. It Is The Very Opposite Of Passion.
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Meanwhile It's Got Stormy, The Tattered Fog Even Thicker, Chasing Across My Path. Three People Are Sitting In A Glassy Tourist Cafe Between Clouds And Clouds, Protected By Glass From All Sides. Since I Don't See Any Waiters, It Crosses My Mind That Corpses Have Been Sitting There For Weeks, Statuesque. All This Time The Cafe Has Been Unattended, For Sure. Just How Long Have They Been Sitting Here, Petrified Like This?
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Clouds
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If You Do Not Have An Absolutely Clear Vision Of Something, Where You Can Follow The Light To The End Of The Tunnel, Then It Doesn't Matter Whether You're Bold Or Cowardly, Or Whether You're Stupid Or Intelligent. Doesn't Get You Anywhere.
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In Private I'm Not. You Will Have To Ask My Wife. She Maintains I'm A Fluffy Husband.
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Wife
Fluffy
For A Moment The Feeling Crept Over Me That My Work, My Vision, Is Going To Destroy Me, And For A Fleeting Moment I Let Myself Take A Long, Hard Look At Myself, Something I Would Not Otherwise Do--out Of Instinct, On Principle, Out Of Self-preservation--look At Myself With Objective Curiosity To See Whether My Vision Has Not Destroyed Me Already. I Found It Comforting To Note That I Was Still Breathing.
Self
Breathing
Long
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.
Wall
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I Couldn't Roam Wildly And Speak Secretly With Villagers [in North Korea]. No Way You Could Do That. And Honestly, I Didn't Even Try. I Was Realistic Of What I Could Do And Yet Persuaded Them Into Accepting Numerous Things That I Shouldn't Have Filmed.
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Way
I Function Better In The Jungle In Amazonia Or Antarctica Or Alaska Or The Sahara Desert. An Artificial Environment Like A Studio Has Never Attracted Me. I Could Work In A Studio, But I Would Never Really Feel At Home.
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Alaska
Sahara Desert
One Of The Most Original And Poetic Works Of Cinema Made Anywhere In The Seventies.
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Poetic
Made
I Love Nature But Against My Better Judgment.
Judgment
Nature Love
We Were Very, Very Lucky [with Tim White Filmed Making Historic Discoveries In The East African Rift ] . In 100 Years, Only Three Skeletal Remains [of Early Man] Were Ever Found At This Site. This Was The Third One, And We Were Right There When It Happened. In Fact, When I First Heard They Had Found Something, I Said, "please Stop It! Don't Do Anything Right Now. Let's Do It Tomorrow Until We Have Unpacked Our Cameras And Assembled Our Stuff.
Men
Discovery
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The Internet Doesn't Have Any Qualities, Technical Qualities. It's Just Fast, Reaching Out Everywhere And So, It Can Process That And That Volume Of Data Flows And So, But It Doesn't Have Any Qualities Like "good" Or "bad" Or "ethical" Or "non-ethical". It's Humans, It's Us, Not The Internet.
Data
Quality
Flow
There Is Never An Excuse Not To Finish A Film.
Film
Excuse
If You’re Purely After Facts, Please Buy Yourself The Phone Directory Of Manhattan. It Has Four Million Times Correct Facts. But It Doesn’t Illuminate.
Phones
Manhattan
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Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read, Read...if You Don't Read, You Will Never Be A Filmmaker.
Filmmaking
Filmmaker
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It Was A Subject [ Volcanoes] That Was Dormant In Me For A Long Time And It Popped Up 40 Years Ago When I Made A [short] Film On The Caribbean Island Of Guadeloupe About A Volcano That Was About To Explode And A Single Farmer Refused To Leave ["la Soufrière"].
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Years
It's All Movies For Me. And Besides, When You Say Documentaries, In My Case, In Most Of These Cases, Means "feature Film" In Disguise.
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Documentaries
Film
[internet] Is Amazing As Much As Human Beings Can Be Amazing, And It's Debased And Depraved And Vile As Human Beings Can Be.
Internet
Humans
Depraved
I Think Psychology And Self-reflection Is One Of The Major Catastrophes Of The Twentieth Century.
Thinking
Reflection
Self
If I Had To Climb Into Hell And Wrestle The Devil Himself For One Of My Films, I Would Do It.
Devil
Film
Hell
If You Go To Florence, It Has All Surface Beauty, But Like Venice, It's Simply A Museum Of Renaissance Times. Los Angeles Is Raw, Uncouth And Bizarre, But It's A Place Of Substance. It Has More New Horizons Than Any Other Place.
Museums
Venice
Florence
When I See A Face, I See A Face In General And I See You Are Curious, I See The Curiosity But I Don't Not Look After A Dermatological Report Of Your Cheeks, And That's What You See When You're Too High-resolution. And Now Desperately In Post-production, In Color Grading, They Are Trying To Wipe Out The Precision Of The Dermatological Report.
Color
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Trying
I Make Films Because I Have Not Learned Anything Else And I Know I Can Do It To A Certain Degree. And It Is My Duty Because This Might Be The Inner Chronicle Of What We Are. We Have To Articulate Ourselves, Otherwise We Would Be Cows In The Field.
Might
Cows
Fields
Robert Rodriguez, Makes A Feature Film In 35mm Celluloid One And A Half Hours Long, And Nobody Believed Him, I Think He Wrote A Book About It And Gave All The Details Of How He Spent The Money, Even Making A 35mm Celluloid Feature Film Was Possible, At Least For Rodriguez.
Book
Thinking
Long
I Prefer To Be Alive, So I'm Cautious About Taking Risks.
Risk
Alive
Cautious
Tourism Is Sin, And Travel On Foot Virtue.
Travel
Feet
Tourism
I Know What I'm Talking About And I've Never Been Over Budget, In 70 Films.
Talking
Film
Knows
[this Kind Of Strange Mythology About Me.] I've Pulled A Huge Steamboat Over A Mountain; I've Done A Feature Film With All The Actors Acting Under Hypnosis - Things That Are Very Unusual.
Hypnosis
Acting
Mountain
Our Presence On This Planet Does Not Seem To Be Sustainable. Our Technical Civilization Makes Up Particularly Vulnerable. There Is Talk All Over The Scientific Community About Climate Change. Many Of Them [scientists] Agree, The End Of Human Life On Earth Is Assured.
Community
Environmental
Climate
For A Film I Shot On The Most Difficult Mountain On God's Wide Earth In Patagonia For A Sequence Where There Was High Probability Some Digital Effects Were Needed, Somebody Made Storyboards And I Quickly Ignored Them, After Half An Hour I Ignored Them And I Never Used Any Digital Effect.
Mountain
Half
Earth
However, There Are A Couple Of Volcanoes Very Close Nearby, Like Vesuvius In Italy Right Next To Naples.
Couple
Volcanoes
Next
Ambition Is To Be The Fastest Runner On This Planet, To Be The First On The South Pole, Which Is A Grotesque Perversion Of Ambition. It's An Ego Trip, And I'm Not On An Ego Trip. I Don't Have Ambitions - I Have A Vision.
Ambition
Ego
Vision
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.
Drawing
Use
Caves
It Is Not Only My Dreams, My Belief Is That All These Dreams Are Yours As Well. The Only Distinction Between Me And You Is That I Can Articulate Them. And That Is What Poetry Or Painting Or Literature Or Filmmaking Is All About... And It Is My Duty Because This Might Be The Inner Chronicle Of What We Are. We Have To Articulate Ourselves, Otherwise We Would Be Cows In The Field.
Dream
Would Be
Literature
I'm Trying To Find These Rare Moments Where You Feel Completely Illuminated. Facts Never Illuminate You. The Phone Directory Of Manhattan Doesn't Illuminate You, Although It Has Factually Correct Entries, Millions Of Them. But These Rare Moments Of Illumination That You Find When You Read A Great Poem, You Instantly Know. You Instantly Feel This Spark Of Illumination. You Are Almost Stepping Outside Of Yourself And You See Something Sublime.
Phones
Illumination
Sublime
Here, All Of A Sudden, We Have A Revolution In - In Communication, And It Is - It Is Really, Truly Big. Internet Is As Big As The Introduction Of Fire To The Human Race, Or The Introduction Of Electricity Into Our Lives.
Communication
Revolution
Internet
ِِِِِِِِِِart House Theaters Are Vanishing. They Have Almost Disappeared Completely, And That Means There's A Shift In What Audiences Want To See. And They Have To Be Aware Of That And Be Realistic. It's As Simple As That.
Art
Mean
Simple
I Don't Want To Travel.
Want
Want To Travel
I Don't Spend Sleepless Nights Over Getting Very Bad Reviews.
Night
Insomnia
Reviews
I Live My Life Outside Of The Glitz And Glamour Of The Red Carpet Events, And So You’ll Never See Me There. I’m Never At Parties.
Party
Red
Events
Nature Is Monumentally Indifferent.
Indifferent
I Simply Don't Like The Culture Of Drugs. I Never Liked The Hippies For It. I Think It Was A Mistake To Be All The Time Stoned And On Weed. It Didn't Look Right And It Doesn't Look Right Today Either And The Damage Drugs Have Done To Civilizations Are Too Enormous. And Besides, I Don't Need Any Drug To Step Out Of Myself. I Don't Want Them And I Do Not Need Them.
Weed
Mistake
Hippie
The Universe Couldn't Care Less About Us. I Say This Very Clearly In The Film [ "into The Inferno"]: Our Planet Is "indifferent To Scurrying Roaches, Retarded Reptiles And Vapid Humans Alike."
Vapid
Roaches
Reptiles
Of Course I Do Things In My Voice In My Commentary, Which I Wrote.
Voice
Courses
Commentary
You Will Learn More By Walking From Canada To Guatemala Than You Will Ever Learn In Film School.
School
Guatemala
Canada
There Are Specific Times Where Film Noir Is A Natural Concomitant Of The Mood. When There's Insecurity, Collapse Of Financial Systems - That's Where Film Noir Always Hits Fertile Ground.
Insecurity
Noir
Financial
Money Doesn't Make Films. You Just Do It And Take The Initiative.
Film
Initiative
Just Do It
I Run My Own Film School, The Rogue Film School, And I Do It Over Three And A Half Days, Eight Hours Non-stop Everyday; Alone, Single-handedly. But The Difference Is In The Rogue Film School I Do Have Real Human Beings In Front Of Me From All Over The World, And Of Course There's This Course As Well, They Can Ask, Talk About Their Problems And Obstacles, Finances, Anything, You Just Name It. Whereas In The Masterclass, You Are Speaking To Cameras.
Running
Real
School
Strangely Enough, There's This Mythology Sprouting Out That I Cannot Stop.
Enough
Mythology
I Have Always Postulated That We Have To Find A New Way To Deal With Reality. It's Not So Much Facts That Interest Me, But A Deeper Truth In Them - An Ecstasy Of Truth, An Ecstatic Truth That Illuminates Us. That's What I've Been After.
Reality
Facts
Way
Technology Has A Great Advantage In That We Are Capable Of Creating Dinosaurs And Show Them On The Screen Even Though They Are Extinct 65 Million Years. All Of A Sudden, We Have A Fantastic Tool That Is As Good As Dreams Are.
Dream
Technology
Years
Orson Welles, One Of The Best Of The Best. One Of The Strongest. As Strong As An Animal. He Somehow Was Pushed Out Of The Business Because He Would Spend The Entire Budget Of The Film Before He Had Even Done Half The Pre-production.
Strong
Animal
Done
I Have A Great Map Of The Tibesti Mountains In The Southern Sahara Or Northern Chad. It's A Dream Of Mine To Go There, But It's Such A Volatile Area, You Have To Be Prudent.
Dream
Southern
Mountain
I Shouldn't Make Movies Anymore. I Should Go To A Lunatic Asylum.
Lunatic Asylums
Asylums
Should
Public Life Is Constantly Aware Of The Volcano.
Volcanoes
Life Is
Public Life
I Know Whenever It Comes To Be Really Dysfunctional And Vile And Base And Hostile On Screen, I'm Good At That.
Knows
Hostile
Screens
In My Films, I Hope There Are A Few Moments Where You Feel Almost Illuminated, Like In A State Of Ecstasy, Stepping Out Of Yourself, Beyond Yourself And Perceiving Something Which Is Only, In The Case Of Cinema, Possible In Collective Dreams.
Dream
Cinema
Film
I Have Worked For Youtube Like Texting And Driving Because I Was Curious To Test What's Out There And How Does It Function, Can I Release Something Like About Texting And Driving To Very Young Audiences, At The Age Where They Do Their Drivers Test? And The Response Was Phenomenal, Millions Of People Saw It.
People
Age
Doe
I Travel Without Barely Any Luggage. Just A Second Set Of Underwear And Binoculars And A Map And A Toothbrush.
Underwear
Maps
Toothbrushes
I Think Irish People Started To Move To The United States - Many Things That Were Of Consequence. And It Was A Tiny And Mild Event Compared To What Had Happened 74,000 Years Ago.
Moving
Thinking
Years
The Power Of A Volcano When It Erupts Is So Evident, So Visible, So Palpable.
Volcanoes
Visible
Evident
I Believe The Common Denominator Of The Universe Is Not Harmony, But Chaos, Hostility And Murder.
Believe
Directors
Common
Spirit Of Immersion And Curiosity And Awe And Participation Is Something Which Timothy Treadwell And I Have In Common.
Curiosity
Spirit
Common
There Are Certainly Laws And Elements That Make A Film More Accessible To Mainstream Audiences. If You've Got Tom Cruise As A Strongman, I'm Sure It Would Have Larger Audiences, But It Wouldn't Have The Same Substance.
Law
Substance
Elements
I Went To Volcanoes Where I Knew That There Was A Lot Of Mythology Around Them; There Was Something Like The Creation Of Gods And Monsters And Demons.
Volcanoes
Monsters
Demon
The Elections Have A Different Platform, The Town Hall Is The Platform For It. But The Other Question Behind All This Is Should I Run For President?
Running
President
Different
Facts Do Not Constitute Truth.
Facts
I Do Whatever Pushes Me Hardest. It's Coming At Me And I Try To... It's Like Uninvited Guest And I Have To Wrestle Them Out The Door Or Through The Window - Get Them Out And Get Over With Them Quickly.
Doors
Trying
Guests
It Seems Odd, But People Who See My Films Normally Take Them In In A Deeper Way Than You Would Actually Watch A Film, Let's Say The Terminator Or Whatever.
People
Watches
Way
As For The "anger" Of The Volcano, We Leave It Up To The Local Populations Who Create Their Demons, Their Gods And Their Divine Punishment.
Volcanoes
Punishment
Population
I Think There Should Be Holy War Against Yoga Classes.
War
Yoga
Thinking
It's Not Far-fetched That Almost Everywhere In The World Where You Have Volcanoes You Have Mythologies Or New Gods Being Created.
Volcanoes
World
Mythology
Only The Poets Can Hold The Country Together, And I Wanted To Hold Germany Together.
Country
Together
Germany
I Do Not Want To Have A Cell Phone. I Do Not Want It For Cultural Reasons. I Do Not Want To Be Available All The Time. I Want To Have Time To Think And To Touch Somebody, And Have A Meal Across My Kitchen Table Without A Cell Phone, Being Constantly On Tweets.
Thinking
Kitchen
Cell Phone
I Am Not An Artist And Never Have Been. Rather I Am Like A Craftsman And Feel Very Close To The Mediaeval Artisans Who Produced Their Work Anonymously And Who, Along With Their Apprentices, Had A True Feeling For The Physical Materials They Were Working With.
Artist
Feelings
Craftsman
I Am A Product Of My Failures.
Products
Perseverance Has Kept Me Going Over The Years. Things Rarely Happen Overnight. Filmmakers Should Be Prepared For Many Years Of Hard Work. The Sheer Toil Can Be Healthy And Exhilarating.
Perseverance
Hard Work
Years
It Doesn't Matter Whether You Shoot On Celluloid Or On Digital, You Better Make A Good Film.
Matter
Digital
Film
In The Communist Revolution In North Korea, When They Threw Out The Japanese Occupiers, They Claimed The Power In The Dynamic Of This Volcano For Their Revolution, Saying That This Is At The Center Of The Dynamics Of Our Revolution. Everything That You Encounter - You Don't Have, For Example, Any Advertisements, You Don't Have Anything Like That Anywhere In The Country - If You See Anything It Would Be Propaganda, And Propaganda Always Inevitably Comes Back To The Volcano. It's Always Including The Volcano. You See The New Leader And Standing Behind Him You See The Volcano.
Country
Volcanoes
Korea
The Volcano Itself Wasn't That Interesting, But The Man Who Refused To Be Evacuated - The Only One Of 75,000 People - Was What Set The Tone For The Film ["encounters At The End Of The World"] That We Made Together [with Clive Oppenheimer] Ten Years Later.
Men
Volcanoes
Years
Of Course There's A Value In A Storyboard If You Do A Big - Let's Say An Action Movie And Actors Have To Move And Act In Front Of A Green Screen Because Entire Backgrounds Exploding And Cars Flying Through There Have To Be Created Separately, And In This Case You Better Make Sure The Actors Are Precisely Placed And The Background Action Is Moving In A Certain Moment, For This Type Of Film You Would Need A Storyboard.
Moving
Car
Flying
When You Look At Any Of My Films You Will Immediately Be Able To Tell This Is A [werner] Herzog Film. Even If You Didn't Have Any Credits, In Two Minutes Flat You Would Know.
Two
Looks
Credit
I'm Quite Convinced That Cooking Is The Only Alternative To Film Making. Maybe There's Also Another Alternative, That's Walking On Foot.
Feet
Cooking
Alternatives
Along With This Rapid Growth Of Forms Of Communication At Our Disposal - Be It Fax, Phone, Email, Internet Or Whatever - Human Solitude Will Increase In Direct Proportion.
Communication
Technology
Phones
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.
Boys
Rocks
Years
I Have Learned A Lot Through Defeats, And, Until Today, It's - I'm Still Haunted By Defeats, And They Do Happen. Sometimes, A Film Of Mine Is Rejected. And How Do You Deal With It? And You Have To Learn How To Deal With It And Survive Anyway.
Today
Film
Sometimes
The Universe Is Not Harmonious: You Know That By Looking Outside.
Harmonious
Knows
Universe
You Can't Have A Helicopter Fly Over Boiling Lava. It Would've Exploded From The Heat, And Is Just Way Too Dangerous. The Pilot Of A Helicopter Would've Flatly Refused Anyway.
Pilots
Way
Lava
Never Wallow In Your Troubles; Despair Must Be Kept Private And Brief.
Despair
Trouble
It's Curiosity, And Always A Sense Of Poetry. You See It In Particular In The Chapter "iceland" Where I'm Reciting Ancient Icelandic Poetry. It Has This Very Beautiful Gravitas In Conjunction With The Volcanoes.
Beautiful
Volcanoes
Iceland
It's Funny How In The Long Time Of Me Working In Various Countries And Various Situations That There Is This Kind Of Idea Out In The Media That I Am A Daredevil And That I Risk The Lives Of Everyone Around Me, But Nobody Ever Gets Hurt On My Shoot. Some Crew Members Sometimes, But The Actors Are Ok.
Country
Hurt
Media
I Work Very Fast And Steadily, And I Don't Hardly Ever Notice That I'm Working. It Feels Like Just Breathing Or Walking When I Do Films.
Breathing
Film
Working It
This Climate Surrounding Me Has Reached Clive Oppenheimer. In Practical Terms He Sees That I'm Not Interested In Any Sort Of Daredevil Stunts, I'm Just Interested In The Work. And He's Convinced That I'm Clinically Sane.
Climate
Daredevil
Not Interested
We Have Volcanoes Also In Our Immediate Neighborhood. I Wish We Didn't Have To Travel That Far. Probably The Kind Of Magnitude And Awesome Raw Power Of Them Is Very Fascinating, And Of Course It's Very Cinematic.
Volcanoes
Wish
Kind
Facts Sometimes Have A Strange And Bizarre Power That Makes Their Inherent Truth Seem Unbelievable.
Facts
Strange
Sometimes
Facts Do Not Convey Truth. That's A Mistake. Facts Create Norms, But Truth Creates Illumination.
Mistake
Illumination
Facts
I Do Have A Clear Vision, And I Do See Things That Are Existing In My Quote-unquote Spirit, But That Doesn't Necessary Make Me A Very Spiritual Person.
Spiritual
Vision
Clear
I Think I Would Be A Good Villain In A James Bond Movie. They Were Fairly Weak, The Last Half-dozen Of Villains In James Bond Movies Were Not That Convincing.
Thinking
Would Be
Half
My Contacts With The Film Industry Can Be Described In Very Simple Terms: The Industry Does Not Really Need Me, And I Do Not Really Need The Industry.
Simple
Doe
Needs
Look Into The Eyes Of A Chicken And You Will See Real Stupidity. It Is A Kind Of Bottomless Stupidity, A Fiendish Stupidity. They Are The Most Horrifying, Cannibalistic And Nightmarish Creatures In The World.
Real
Eye
Stupidity
You Better Make Yourself Acquainted To What The Requirements Are, What The Value Of Money Is All About And How You Create A Long-term Survival, And In Many Cases It Has To Do With How You Handle Finances.
Long
Survival
Requirements
All Of A Sudden It's Twelve-year-olds Who Are Contacting Me, Fifteen-year-olds, And They Have Very, Very Fascinating Questions. However, They Speak In A Language Of Their Age Group Which I Have To Learn First.
Years
Age
Groups
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.
Wall
Real
Drama
We Live In A Society That Has No Adequate Images Anymore, And If We Do Not Find Adequate Images And An Adequate Language For Our Civilization With Which To Express Them, We Will Die Out Like The Dinosaurs.
Civilization
Adequate
Dinosaurs
Fact Creates Norms, And Truth Illumination.
Truth
Illumination
Facts
Most Of The Volcanoes Are Pretty Far Away. You Have To Go To, God Knows, Alaska. Or You Have To Go To The Southern Indies Or You Have To Go To A Specific Island.
Alaska
Islands
Volcanoes
If You Want To Propose Marriage To Your Girlfriend And You Live In England And She Is In Sicily, Do The Decent Thing And Walk Down There. Travelling By Car Or Aeroplane Wouldn't Be Right At Such A Moment.
Girlfriend
Car
England
I Think I'm A Prudent Filmmaker.
Thinking
Prudent
Filmmaker
Tourism Is A Mortal Sin.
Tourism
Sin
Mortal Sin
Roger Ebert Was A Very Valiant Soldier Of Cinema Who Passed Away, And We Miss Him. It's Over With Serious Discourse About Cinema In The Print Media And On Television. It Has Been Replaced By Celebrity News. So We Are Speaking In His Spirit Always.
Print Media
Missing
Soldier
By The Way, Today With Digital Cameras And Editing On Your Laptop, And Things Like That, You Can Make A Feature Film, A Narrative Feature Film Easily For $10,000.
Editing
Cameras
Narrative
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.
Artist
Echoes
Soul
If You Don't Read, You Will Never Be A Filmmaker.
Inspirational
Motivational
Filmmaker
Get Used To The Bear Behind You.
Behind You
Bears
Used
I Cannot Work Fast Enough. I Cannot Cope Fast Enough, Really. And Just Releasing A Film Is Hard.
Film
Enough
Hard
I Think The Worst That Can Happen In Filmmaking Is If You're Working With A Storyboard. That Kills All Intuition, All Fantasy, All Creativity.
Creativity
Thinking
Intuition
If The Part Is Really Good Of Course I Would Like To Do It.
Courses
Ifs
"jack Reacher" Was Easy Because The Function Of The Villain Was Just To Spread Fear And Horror.
Horror
Villain
Easy
The Act Of Killing Invents A New Form Of Cinematic Surrealism.
Killing
Form
Surrealism
I Am Too Much Into What I'm Doing In My Work.
Too Much
The Daredevil Aspect To What I Did There Is Moving A Monstrously Big Ship Over A Mountain In The Jungle Of Peru With 800 Or 900 Or So Native People From The Area. So That Idea Was Wild But The Way It Was Executed Was Prudent. Nobody Was Ever Hurt And When It Became Clear That We Had To Be More Secure With The Posts That Would Hold The Ship, I Spent 12 Days Having A Post Built That Would Have Withstood The Force Of 10 Times The Weight Of My Ship.
Hurt
Moving
Ideas
I Think I Would Be A Good Villain In A James Bond Movie.
Thinking
Would Be
Villain
If An Actor Knows How To Milk A Cow, I Always Know It Will Not Be Difficult To Be In Business With Him.
Actors
Cows
Milk
Everyone Who Makes Films Has To Be An Athlete To A Certain Degree Because Cinema Does Not Come From Abstract Academic Thinking; It Comes From Your Knees And Thighs.
Athlete
Thinking
Degrees
Hold Firm To Your Vision But Don't Be A Tyrant On Set.
Tyrants
Vision
Firm
Film Is Not The Art Of Scholars, But Of Illiterates.
Art
Film
Scholar
I Could Not Become An American Citizen. I Would Not Like To Become A Citizen Of A Country That Has Capital Punishment.
Country
Punishment
Citizens
You Should Bear In Mind That Almost All My Documentaries Are Feature Films In Disguise.
Mind
Documentaries
Bears
Well, It Had To Be About The Stories And The People Who Live Under The Volcano, What Kind Of New Gods Do They Create? What Sort Of Demons? And Of Course North Korea Falls Clearly Into This Category Since The Socialist Revolution At The End Of The Second World War. Somehow They Adopted The Myth Of The Power And Dynamics Of Their Volcano.
War
Fall
Volcanoes
I Looked, For Example, To Certain Types Of Literature To Which I Would Like To Refer, Like The Peregrine By J. A. Baker, And I Mention A Book, "read This, Read It, Read It If You Are Serious Of Being In Any Type Of Art Or Into Filmmaking," Or Films That I Should Quote As Examples.
Art
Book
Example
After "jack Reacher" The Parts I Didn't Like, Most Of It Was Silly.
Silly
Similar Thing Until Today, With Digital Cameras You Look After Something Like That As Robust As They Can Be.
Cameras
Looks
Today
For Such An Advanced Civilization As Ours To Be Without Images That Are Adequate To It Is As Serious A Defect As Being Without Memory.
Memories
Civilization
Serious
The Opinion Of The Public Is Sacred. The Director Is A Cook Who Merely Offers Different Dishes To Them And Has No Right To Insist They React In A Particular Way. A Film Is Just A Projection Of Light, Completed Only When It Crosses The Gaze Of The Audience[...]
Light
Directors
Different
There Are Deeper Strata Of Truth In Cinema, And There Is Such A Thing As Poetic, Ecstatic Truth. It Is Mysterious And Elusive, And Can Be Reached Only Through Fabrication And Imagination And Stylization.
Imagination
Cinema
Mysterious
I Don't Care Whether The Person Is Guilty Or Not Guilty. It's Not My Business To Establish Guilt Or Innocence. It's A Court Of Law That Does That And A Jury Does That, But Not Me.
Law
Guilt
Doe
I've Never Left My Culture. I've Left My Country, But I've Not Left My Culture. In The Same Way, You Shouldn't Be Worried Why George Lucas Is Going To The Outer Galaxy To Make A Movie. He's Still Making A Film Within His Culture; He's Making An American Film. I Go To Thailand Or The Peruvian Jungle, The Amazon, And I Still Make Bavarian Films.
Country
Way
Amazon
At The Same Time, There's Something Magnificent About Volcanoes; They Created The Atmosphere That We Need For Breathing.
Volcanoes
Breathing
Atmosphere
I Always Had A Feeling, For Example, That There Should Be Something From Verdi's "requiem" In The Film. You Hear It When You See The Lava Flow In Iceland. That Turned Out To Be A Very Easy Choice.
Iceland
Choices
Feelings
I Have Been In Lots Of Very Intense Life Situations. I Have Been Shot At, And I Have Been Hungry, And I Have Been In Solitude, And I Have Also Briefly Been Behind Bars. So In A Way, I Know The Heart Of Men.
Heart
Men
Solitude
You Must Live Life In Its Very Elementary Forms. The Mexicans Have A Very Nice Word For It: Pura Vida. It Doesn't Mean Just Purity Of Life, But The Raw, Stark-naked Quality Of Life. And That's What Makes Young People More Into A Filmmaker Than Academia.
Life
Nice
Mean
It Happens Sometimes That The Material Itself Carries Things You Have Not Fully Planned. The Footage Has Its Own Right, Its Own Life, Its Own Vibrancy And Energy In It.
Energy
Vibrancy
Sometimes
It Is Something More Fleeting Than What You Normally See. People Might Somehow Take It Into Their Own Dreams, Into Their Own Life, In A Way. I Hear It More Recently; People Are Telling Me That When They Leave The Theater And See One Of My Films, They Are Not Alone Anymore. It's Probably More That Kind Of Feeling. If I Managed To Do A Film Like That, Everything Is Fine.
Dream
People
Feelings
You Should Look Straight At A Film; That's The Only Way To See One. Film Is Not The Art Of Scholars But Of Illiterates.
Art
Looks
Way
There's More Substance In My Prose And My Poetry Than In All My Films Together. Writing Is A More Direct Way Of Expressing Yourself Because, In Cinema, You Always Have Finances, Organization, Actors, Technical Apparatus And All That Stuff Coming In Between.
Writing
Organization
Together
When I Film, There Are No Emotions. That Would Be The Last Thing.
Would Be
Lasts
Emotion
I'm Not A Journalist; I'm A Poet. I Had A Discourse, An Encounter With These People But I Never Had A List Of Questions.
Poet
Journalist
I'm Reminded Of An Interview Larry King Had On His Talk Show With One Of Michael Jackson's Sisters. He's Talking About How Many Millions She Made On Her Latest Record, And All Of A Sudden, She Looks At Him Tearfully And Says, "larry, You Know, I'm Not Interested In Money Or Sales Or Songs. I'm A Spiritual Person." And I Thought, "oh My God..."
Spiritual
Song
Kings
There Are Certain Ways, Narrative Forms, That Do Not Function As A Continuation, For Example, Of 3d Movies. You See, What Is Obvious To Me Is Virtual Reality Or Immersive 360 Degrees Virtual Reality Is Not Somehow A Part Of 3d Movies, And It Is Not A New Form Of Video Games, It's Neither, It Is Something Completely New, Something Different, And Nobody Has Come Up Yet With Real Convincing Content.
Real
Games
Degrees
For Me, The Distinction Between Documentaries And Feature Films Is Not So Clear - My "documentaries" Were Largely Scripted, Rehearsed, And Repeated, And Have A Lot Of Fantasy And Concoction In Them.
Documentaries
Fantasy
Film
I Am So Used To Plunging Into The Unknown That Any Other Surroundings And Form Of Existence Strike Me As Exotic And Unsuitable For Human Beings.
Exotic
Used
Form
I'm Not Into The Culture Of Complaint. I Roll Up My Sleeves And Somehow I Get It Together.
Together
Culture
Sleeves
I Think A State Should Not Be In The Capacity Of Killing Anyone With The Exception Of Warfare.
Thinking
Warfare
Killing
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.
Dark
Years
Silence
I Don't Dabble, I'm Good At Acting.
Acting
Roger Ebert Was The Last Mammoth Alive Who Was Holding The Flag For Real Movies And Moviemakers.
Real
Flags
Alive
Ten Years Ago In Antarctica Shooting "encounters At The End Of The World," I Met A Very Fine Volcanologist From Cambridge University [clive Oppenheimer] And We Kept Talking About Doing A Film And All Of A Sudden It Became Serious When He Hinted At The Possibility To Film In North Korea.
Cambridge University
Talking
Korea
The Deal Was We Had To Have People Accompanying Us And They Would Ask Us Not To Film Something [in North Korea]. For Example, We Wanted To Film At A Certain Place And There Happened To Be A Building Under Construction And It Didn't Look As Fancy As The Other Buildings, So They Wanted Us To Shoot Where Everything Looked Finished And Made A Good Impression Of The Cityscape.
Korea
People
Example
Netflix Knew I Was Going To North Korea And Ethiopia And Iceland. They Saw The Film And Liked It And That Was That.
Korea
Iceland
Netflix
Do You Not Then Hear This Horrible Scream All Around You That People Usually Call Silence.
People
Silence
Scream
I'm One Of The Few Reading And Thinking People Who Loves Las Vegas For The Vulgarity And Omnipresence Of The Dream. The Collective Dream. There's Something Enormous About It. Let Me Say One Thing: Las Vegas And Cinema Have Similar Roots. The Country Fair. The Magician At The Country Fair. The Vulgarity Of The Country Fair.
Dream
Country
Reading
Trending Author
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Category
Information