War & Peace Quote by Klaus Kinski

Pure combustion disguised as a production update. Kinski is describing filmmaking as trench warfare, and he casts himself as the unwilling soldier forced to keep firing: "shoot without any breaks". The phrasing is physical, breathless, all pressure and no craft talk. That is the point. He wants you to feel the set not as a workplace but as a provocation chamber where exhaustion becomes aesthetic, and cruelty passes for direction.

The line detonates because it collapses performance and reality. "I yell at Herzog and hit him" is not a confession seeking absolution; its bluntness is a flex, an attempt to seize narrative control. Kinski is telling us: I am the engine, I am the cost. The subtext is a labor dispute staged as a personal feud. "I have to fight for every sequence" frames him as guardian of the film against Herzog's vision, but it's also a tell: Kinski can't tolerate being shaped. Every "sequence" becomes a referendum on dominance.

Then the wish: "Herzog would catch the plague". It's medieval, theatrical, deliberately excessive - an actor reaching for the biggest curse in the cupboard because ordinary hatred is too small for the myth they were building. Context matters: Kinski and Werner Herzog's collaborations (Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo) were famously volatile, sold to the public as genius fueled by mutual torment. Kinski leans into that lore, turning dysfunction into publicity, and turning rage into a kind of authorship. The brutality isn't incidental; it's part of the brand.