oldhollywood:

Klaus Kinski on the set of That Most Important Thing: Love (1975) Photo by Jean Gaumy (via) 

“I felt this thing coming up in myself, just really physically growing in myself and happening, but it was a jungle, so I couldn’t distinguish things so much. I knew there were, in myself, the souls of millions of people who lived centuries ago - not just people but animals, plants, the elements, things, even, matter - that all of these exist in me.

… And through the years it became clearer and clearer, this thing; it started to separate itself. I could make it come when I had to concentrate on, let’s say, a person I had to become - this thing became stronger. And took more of me. In this moment, I let it do it, because I wanted, I had to be this person. And as I was led to doing it, there was then no way back. And the more I tried to do it, the more I hated it. But there was no way back anymore; it was always going farther and farther and farther.

Until one day, when I was walking through the streets of Paris, I started crying, because I could look at a man, a woman, a dog, anything, and receive it, anything, everything; there was no difference between physical and psychological. I felt like I was breaking out, breaking up, receiving everything, every moment, even things I did not see. There is no turning back from this.

But this danger is the power you have. It is this same power that lets you hold an audience when you are on a stage. Then it is a concentration, the same concentration that in kung fu is used for the kick that kills or to break a table with your hand. It means that you are sure of the power and that you relinquish yourself to it.”

-Kinski, quoted in Playboy magazine (November 1985)

(via melvillemifunemtumekonigsberg)