Quotes from Nicolas Winding Refn

I would love to make a romantic comedy.

I think you have to be so indulgent in creativity in that, if you're happy, it's successful. If it's then financially successful, which is different parameters, then you're also happy.

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

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 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.

We're premiering 'The Neon Demon' in Cannes, which is the representation of 'The Neon Demon,' which is all about glamour and vulgarity.

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

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

I love watching the superhero movies, and I would love to make one. But in a way, 'Drive' is probably the greatest superhero movie ever made.

Man's fear of sexuality is the basis of all horror from the male perspective.

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.

In "Drive," there's a heightened male edge. In "Only God Forgives," it was almost crawling back into the womb of the mother. And now with "The Neon Demon," being reborn as a 16-year-old girl.

Good and bad, what's good and bad? I don't know.

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.

I thought it would be interesting to try something in Hollywood after a movie like 'Valhalla Rising,' which I was really pleased with, personally.

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.

Understanding one's own power is more interesting than someone being given something powerful.

Art is very much about making your weaknesses your strength.

I believe that the constant possibility of failure or possibility of decision-making feeds your creativity.

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.

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.

It was a very comfortable and personal relationship [Cliff Martinez ].'The Neon Demon'is our third movie and the music has never been as important as for this movie.

The greater the darkness, the better the drama.

For 'Drive,' we needed the songs to dictate emotions and really bring you into the mind of The Driver; he's a unique and complicated guy, so the music itself had to be unique and complicated.