Quotes from Johan Renck

I'm drawn to the dark but not the nihilistic aspects, the relentless parts, of darkness.

I'm very impatient, and I'm very curious.

Being a police officer in America is a tough job.

I like dark, hopeless, beautiful tragedies.

I'm a huge Crowley fan, I've always been. I tried to make a movie on his life a few years ago, but we didn't manage to put it together.

I've never been a frustrated person because I learnt at a very young age that the frustration I had inside of me had to do with creativity and the ability to transform that into action. I realized very early my restlessness had to be channelled into things I could do.

If I feel the labor and the gruesome process, that helps me appreciate the art.

The first time I went behind the camera was in 1993. I felt, 'This is my thing,' and I knew that someday I'd make a feature.

I'm very much drawn to melancholy and those kinds of emotions.

I grew up all over the world. My dad was a doctor but not a career-type doctor. He was very curious, so he took the whole family and moved to Miami in the '70s, and we lived there for a couple of years. Then we continued like that and lived in various places around the world.

In the early 1990s, I was signed as a singer to the same label as Robyn. She was in her early teens, and I was in my twenties, so we didn't hang out, but our paths crossed so many times that we slowly got to know each other and became friends.

The only way to make something good is if you make it difficult for yourself on every conceivable level. You can't cut corners; you can't rest on your laurels.

All my close friends are non-conformist. To say 'misfits' sounds bad, but there is something positive about being a little on the outside - it gives you an interesting perspective on things - and I think that's something Robyn and I share.

I was a huge fan of this band called Sparks. It was a pretty good inauguration to music, since their music is quite complex.

I wish I had been born 20 years earlier, so I could have been in the movie business in the 1970s.

I've never been one to talk analytically about a music video or whatever I do.

The interest in character-driven content over narrative-driven ditto is increasing; that's why television steps in. Personally, I love it, since psychology and character, really, are my beacons.

Art is never finished. It is only abandoned.

In this artistic world, you might as well find a way to work with somebody that you have admiration for.

I started out as musician and recording artist but quite soon started to do my own videos. One thing led to another, and soon I was making videos for a living.

I began my career as a recording artist, and eventually I started directing my own music videos.