Werner Herzog's Lies Are Good For You

“Through imagination, stylization and invention, we become much more truthful. Take, for example, my 1992 film ‘Lessons of Darkness,’ which featured the fires in Kuwait after the Iraqi army set the entire country on fire. It begins with a quote from the French philosopher Blaise Pascal: ‘The collapse of the stellar universe will occur, like creation, in grandiose splendor.’ What a wonderful sentence! Of course, it is not Pascal — I invented it. Pascal couldn’t have said it better himself, let’s face it. To those with the mind of accountants, this looks like a fake. But ultimately it is not a fake because I elevate the audience onto a very high level before they have even seen the first image of the film, and you are stepping into this film with a different level of preparedness. In this respect, even though the quote is invented, it is not intended to deceive or mislead or defraud you. It’s exactly the contrary: to fill you with a certain awe and to prepare your soul for something that has never been seen in the history of humankind. So it is not a lie, it is an intensified form of truth.”
-You know what? Wherever Werner Herzog wants to take me, I am willing to follow.