Kinski always says it's full of erotic elements. I don't see it so much erotic. I see it more full of obscenity. It's just... Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and... just rotting away. Of course, there's a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing. They just screech in pain. 
It's an unfinished country. It's still prehistorical. The only thing that is lacking... is the dinosaurs here. It's like a curse weighing on an entire landscape. And whoever... goes too deep into this has his share of this curse. So we are cursed with what we are doing here. It's a land that God, if he exists has... has created in anger. It's the only land where... where creation is unfinished yet. Taking a close look at what's around us there. There is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. And we, in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle, we in comparison to that enormous articulation, we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban... novel... A cheap novel. We have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication, overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order. Even the stars up here in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no real harmony as we have conceived it. But when I say this, I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it, I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment.(Werner Herzog as himself in Les Blank's extraordinary feature-length documentary, Burden of Dreams - 1982, that closely follows the struggle of the worldwide acclaimed German filmmaker and his sisyphean efforts to complete the epic feature Fitzcarraldo, against desperate odds in the Amazon basin).
Monologul lui Herzog apare undeva spre final şi e echivalentul unei descătuşări, chit că la acel moment încă nu trăsese ultimul cadru la Fitzcarraldo (aveau să mai treacă nişte luni până să ajungă acolo). Tocmai din perspectiva asta l-am inclus: trebuie să auziţi vocea lui Herzog! E vocea unui om care a petrecut aproape 5 ani în junglă, autoexpunându-se la tot soiul de privaţiuni şi pericole, numai şi numai pentru a duce la capăt un proiect în care, într-o vreme, mai credeau doar el şi indienii machiguenga. E o voce în care accentul german se abate ca o grindină asupra cuvintelor englezeşti iar rafala asta scoate în relief frustrarea, amărăciunea şi încrâncenarea celui ce luptă aproape de unul singur. Atenţie, de exemplu, cum articulează It's a land that God, if he exists has... has created in anger sau Even the stars up here in the sky look like a mess. Dar mai e ceva în glasul lui: credinţa nestrămutată într-o idee: cinemaul. E vocea unui om obsedat de această idee dincolo de orice instinct de conservare.