There is so much to quote from this NYT Review of Werner Herzog’s new memoir Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo, but here are three to start: 1) “Every gray hair on my head I call Kinski.” 2) “Time is tugging at me like an elephant, and the dogs are tugging at my heart.” 3) “Life seems like a stranger’s house to me.”

Reviewer Mark Harris, whose Pictures at a Revolution I read excerpts from and liked, is somewhat critical of Herzog’s book, but at times I wonder, in his film historian’s quest for more facts, if he shouldn’t have revisited Herzog’s Minnesota Declaration and read the book looking for a more ecstatic truth.