Nicolas Winding Refn Quotes

Only God Forgives was very much a generation gap in a way. It was all the youth of the world that embraced it. I make films for young people. That's what I will continue to do.

But once you get down to reality, there's no one to play her and there's no movie. It would be ridiculous.

I can do my part of the storytelling. I can carry it. I can paint it. I can maneuver it. I can massage it. But if I don't have anything to work with, then there's nothing.

The vibe, it's that excitement. New York, you just can't describe it. You get a similar thing from Paris and London, but it's not New York.

I have not seen "Batman v Superman," unfortunately. It hasn't been on the plane, as I've been flying a lot.

My movie [The Neon Demon] is a hyper-version of the obsession with beauty. As this crazy obsession grows, longevity does not. Everything seems to become younger and younger. The girls and people around them cannibalize themselves.

Personally I kept my feelings out of it and created a fantasy. That's the process of going through this world being beautiful.

I grew up in the '80s and John Hughes was the filmmaker making serious movies for teenagers.

Elle Fanning was fifteen when we started [The Neon Demon]. She turned seventeen during the shoot. Four weeks before Cannes, she turned eighteen. She had her prom at Cannes.

I'm a fetishist. I make films based on what I would like to see.

My initial idea was I wanted to make it a horror film, very much. At times I do enter that world.

Like all art forms, film is a media as powerful as weapons of mass destruction; the only difference is that war destroys and film inspires.

I never look at the internet because then you just have nothing else to do but just look. Most generally, and even myself as a consumer, you think you know what you want. But what's more interesting is figuring out what you don't want. I think the only way that I can do that is just to do what I think is right. That is the only real gesture of respect. Then people can react to the movie how they want to react.

I think that experiencing through art is a wonderful way to expand the horizon and everything around it.

I've done collaborations in all my movies, and I think it's part of what I enjoy about the process. This kind of intimacy that you create. Because it becomes very intimate.

The casting of any film is around 60% of the film, but it's also about the right casting insight. It's a bit like a house of cards, everyone has to match up in a certain way so the whole structure is grounded. So that's essential, and yes, it's about finding the right people and the right constellation around the lead character.

Where war destroys, art inspires. And in order to inspire, you need to penetrate the brain. In order to penetrate the brain, you need something to react to. To have something to react to, you need to get your emotions up and running. To get your emotions up and running, you need to have something that ... whatever direction you go in, it has to be a movement between you and the experience.

How can creativity be bad? You can have, "I liked it" or "I didn't like it," but, in the end, it's an individual experience. How can you even begin to define that? I find that sometimes extremely arrogant and counter-productive.

There's incredible effect in being either loved or hated, but knowing that, either way, you have penetrated the mind and have altered it; that is a very pleasurable feeling.

The conversations about a film are an example of success because then you know whatever you've done has resonated.

[The Neon Demon] was more my own fascination with beauty. It's my children's fascination beauty.

If an actor or actress is recognizable, that changes our perception of them.

I always say I have a Danish passport, but I am a New Yorker at heart.

The act of creation can be an extreme violent experience.

The Oriental approach to violence is a much more aesthetic and poetic approach, whereas in the western world, violence is put in because you can't solve the problem. Violence is always the last solution, but unfortunately, in cinema, it's the first solution, because it's easy. And it's often too easy.

I think that I am a pornographer, meaning that I make movies based on what excites me and what I would like to see.

I was in Hollywood. It's the mythology heart. It's where all the European films came in the '30s and '40s. The marriage between Europe and Hollywood has always been the best when it works.

There will always be a theatrical experience because there will always be cinemas no matter what. It's like there will always be theaters to have stage plays in.

I think that television has become really, really interesting, in terms of character development. You can have 13 hours to develop a character, as opposed to 25 minutes in a movie. That excites me.

Abbey Lee was a very famous model and had great success. She was very open about the negative aspects of that industry.

I feel that silence is the greatest word, ever. When you don't talk, people begin to read things into you or you become what they long for. When you don't talk, you almost become the mirror image of the other person.

Cinema is mass media, it is both overtly gross and exciting. It is our great mirror of society.

I think that Danish people may be thought off as the happiest people, but honestly...I love America.

The artificial world that we create through images will essentially become real.

It's the hardest thing for an actor not to speak because you take away their main tool. So for an actor, it's very frustrating and very challenging, and very few people can pull it off. Some actors can say a thousand words with just a look, and it's a unique gift.

[Reanu Reeves] is a very imaginative actor. He can have this wonderful balance of humor and fear. He's got these skills to be entertaining but also quite terrifying.

I certainly believe that creativity must be an experience. If I'm to steal time away from people, we should give them something to react to.

Sometimes I just play the theme from Arthur. It reminds me of my childhood in New York and I just love it.

If the Wizard of Oz were real he would be in Hollywood.

I'm a very feminine man. I like feminine things. I don't go to strip clubs. I don't drink beer. I don't play sports.

I sometimes play different kinds of music to see where the performers end up. I play one genre. Then something else when I do it again. It really helps.

I very much enjoy my freedom creatively but I also would love to make one of those big Hollywood films that costs a lot of money and has a lot of people running around with cell phones and all that insanity.

I try not to have too specific notions because it messes up the process later on. I leave it very open to interpretation until I start casting. Everything changes a lot when you start casting. I mean everything.

I am a child of cinema, and I am a cineaste, so everything I do is a reference to something I've heard or experienced or seen. And we all do it, we all steal. The ones who claim they don't, are obviously lying, because you do. You just have to make it your own.

Film works when a director and a star have a connection. You know, when there's something telekinetic between them, there's a partnership, it's like alter egos. It's like James Stewart and Alfred Hitchcock, or Fellini and Mastroianni. I'm not comparing, I'm just saying, if you can come into a relationship where the director and star have such a bond, it's so much easier to make a movie.

I love films, I love movies, I love television, I love television series, I love the internet, I love anything that enhances images. But most of all, I love, love movies.

I don't believe that art makes people violent in any way. I don't. But I do believe art can show people how to be violent and that's much more dangerous in a way.

If you create something that is essentially alien to you - as a man - and make a film about woman, the more I can surround myself with woman and combine it with my soul's point of view, the more I become a stranger in a strange land.