Quotes from Nicolas Winding Refn

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

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

I've been lucky to have a beautiful wife and children. The idea that something so beautiful can be so horrific at the same time. Beauty is a complex thing.

Creativity is narcissism. Creativity is falling in love with one's self as you create. It's self-indulgent.

In a way, art is a great way to release your love, fantasy, and desires. It's like a fetish. It's a comfortable way of excising a lot of your conscience.

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.

Good and bad are not really relevant to me.

I love to be on location. I love to be in other parts of the world. I love to be where I'm reminded about real, you know, emotions. I love to touch things and design things, and I think that, for the actor, it certainly - it certainly helps their performance.

If an actor or actress is recognizable, that changes our perception of them. Sometimes you can play against type, or you can just repeat what they've already done. It can be an obstacle; it's a very fine line.

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.

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

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

I consider it a great honour that my movie Drive inspired so many wonderful artists to come together and create one ultra-cool glam experience.

I love watching the superhero movies and I would love to make one.

I love rock ballads, and I'm kind of in emotional turmoil, being ill and high, so I start to sing to the song, I turn it up and start to sing.

I've always worked a lot with silence in my films. It forces the audience to concentrate on what they're seeing, because silence is pure emotions. It has no logic; it goes straight to the heart.

I base everything on my instinctual approach. There's something very satisfying in that creativity, and it's a bit like an infant drawing.

I very much love Los Angeles, and I love working here. I find it very inspiring and very creative, and some of the best crews are in Los Angeles.

Hollywood is Hollywood. It'll never change, although it does go through its own transformations. I think that there's this obsessiveness with making money, which has gotten out of proportion.

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'm a huge John Hughes fan, and I grew up in the '80s, when his films came out. So, my introduction to what you'd call 'cinema love,' that illusion of love, was 'Sixteen Candles' and Molly Ringwald.

Love comes from the strangest places.

I think the Internet is the greatest invention since women.

With 'Only God Forgives,' what's great about that movie is it just freaked so many people out.