Top 238 Quotes & Sayings by Nicolas Winding Refn

I always approach every film I make as if it was going to be the last. So if I'm going to go out, I'm going out with a bang.

The greatest artists were in a situation where they had to pay their bills. That's a very convenient way to get very creative very fast.

Polarizing is the greatest achievement in any art form, even in cinema.

I'm a huge admirer of Keanu. I think he's absolutely extraordinary.

America has no one to catch you when you fall. That makes you want to achieve. It is healthy for the soul. But all that is valued is success.

I'm dyslexic, which means I have trouble reading and writing. So images really speak to me.

We live in a time where it's very much in vogue, constant search for pure utopian equality, and which, on one level, is quite amusingly silly but also on another probably very important.

I think that art is an act of violence, and the more emotionally engaged you are in a piece of art, the more violent it feels.

My world is just one big chaos!

I've always felt that I was from the future because the future is really not about what you make but what you stand for.

Oh, I love L.A. It's not so much about Hollywood. I love everything in L.A.

Every film that you make has to have a scene that is the heart that blood flows through in every other scene. That scene doesn't always have to be in the beginning of the film. But it can also be at the end, or in the middle, and that can sometimes make the film more effective.

I'm not the greatest filmmaker. There are a lot of better filmmakers than me.

For me, the greatest pleasure is when you make something, and everyone argues about it.

I think 'Videodrome' was an absolute philosophical masterpiece.

I'm glamour. I'm vulgarity. I'm scandal. I'm gossip. I'm the future. I'm the counter culture. I'm commercial reality. I'm artistic singularity.

Coming to Hollywood, you always hear the horror stories, but I had good people around me who maybe didn't understand what I was doing but always protected me.

The 'Neon Demon' is very much designed to be like a YouTube movie. It's designed to be chopped up. You can cut it up into seven or eight pieces and they're, like, vignettes.

The best way to move forward - to bury the past. That doesn't mean you forget it.

I moved to New York when I was eight years old, in 1978. I grew up in Manhattan. I couldn't speak any English, and I had dyslexia, so it took me many years before I could read.

When I was 20 years old, my uncle was an arthouse distributor, and he would take me to Cannes every year to work as a film scout.

People need to express themselves. The more you do that, the better a person you become.

Beauty is like a new class system. The world is so obsessed with beauty; it has been for the last 2,000 years. It's the one stock that's never gone down, the one stock that's never gone out of fashion.

I believe in free education, free healthcare. But I do not believe in equality.

I'm not a knowledgeable comic fanatic, as a lot of other people are.

Creativity is about taking what is the norm and expanding it and continuing to expand it and expand it and expand it and expand it.

I started making films purely based on what I would like to see.

I wanted to be famous. I guess I thought acting would make me famous.

When I was 12 or 13, I started going to the cinema myself.

I started buying films a couple of years ago. The first film-maker I began to obsessively collect was Andy Milligan. He was a New York frustrated artist.

I know how terrifying L.A. can be, because I've been there as a failure. After 'Drive,' it was the most marvellous place in the universe.

I think the Internet is the greatest invention since women.

The first thing I do when I go to people's houses is look at their television, turn it on.

There are wonderful artists who deal in the fashion world only, and you see by their creations that they are changing our understanding of sexuality and freedom and gender-bending.

I'm not a guy's guy. I always loved girl things. I loved dolls. I loved dressing up and much more.

I'd love to do a yakuza movie.

I always, as a firm rule, make my movies based on how inexpensively I can make them because that means the more freedom I'm going to have.

'Bronson' was like, 'I'll do a movie about my own life.' And it became like an experiment.

People react to 'Drive' in a way that is very primal.

Whenever I make a movie, I always try to figure out what kind of music it would be.

Filmmaking is not about what we see - it's a very misconceived notion; it's about what we don't see.

Television is dead. And television will not be reborn. It will not come back.

All my films represent my own needs and wants.

Art is very much about making your weaknesses your strength.

I think that every man has a 16-year-old girl inside of him.

I'm calculated in other things, but not in what I make.

The most creative phase of a film is in shooting, because structure is the defining element of that phase.

I like all kinds of film.

Filmmaking is like any kind of art form. You have to try to figure it out, and you're going to do that by trying.

My mother and stepfather were documentary filmmakers and, of course, had a very healthy Scandinavian mentality. When it came to cinema, my mother was very obsessed with the French New Wave. That was her generation.

L.A. films are hard to define compared to New York films because New York films are their own subgenre, in a way. L.A. is more transparent.

I believe silence is the greatest sound of all.

I'm not a political filmmaker.

For me, it's all about having the performers feel confident in their movements and surroundings. And then I'll figure out how to photograph it afterward.

I would love to make a kids' movie. But they are very hard to make.

A good director is not an expert in anything in particular. A good director just knows a little bit about everything.

Writing is fantasizing about what your film will be like. Shooting is reality. And the post-production is recovering the idea you had.

I would love to make a romantic comedy.

I like extremes.

Art has the power to influence and to make you react to something that you normally wouldn't concern, worry, or even think about or wouldn't want to talk about.