Nicolas Winding Refn Quotes

I am attracted to the complexities and deeper truths of characters, and I can't name a favourite role any more than I can name a favourite food!

I try to give both my heroes and villains an emotional dimensionality which provides the motivation for their actions.

Any show I'm working on, I want the stories to always be about something, and to have the potential to be emotional. That's the kind of story that I like.

In order to deliver the emotional truth in the story, you have to include some of the literal truth.

I don't really approach stories to make them different from other stuff I've seen, I just try to get into the character, into his or her head. Try to make it as funny, as scary or as wild as I can so that I really like it.

When you've got good writing, you can kind of give up all the research, in a way, and start just following the emotional integrity of the journey of your character.

I prefer drama; I think character-driven drama is my favorite kind of stuff to go watch, and I like being challenged by that kind of stuff in that way.

It's a fantastic privilege to spend three or four hundred pages with a reader. You have time to go into certain questions that are painful or difficult or complicated. That's one thing that appeals to me very much about the novel form.

In terms of the parallels, I've never related less to a character than Riggan.

I love the detail about the workings of the human heart and mind that only fiction can provide - film can't get in close enough.

I once took a workshop with Jim Shepard, and he has this term, 'rate-of-revelation,' that has come to mean a lot to me: 'the pace at which we're learning crucial emotional information about the stories' central figures.' An ever-increasing rate-of-revelation is good; a stagnant r-of-r is not.

I'm very drawn to the human condition and the emotional aspects of stories. It's what's not on the page that I get excited about.

The stories I love the most are where the author has a lot of empathy for everyone. The author loves their characters and takes their situations really seriously, and you feel like you're just dropped into a different world.

From a writer's standpoint, each character and story presents its own unique challenges and delights. I'm deeply curious about all of my characters, and I love peeling away their layers to see what's underneath their skin, or secreted deep within their hearts.

I see people sometimes who remind me of my narrators.

Having written for film and television, I had little interest in turning 'The Good Father' into a Hollywood thriller. I was writing a novel, and novels demand that the writer goes deeper, both emotionally and thematically.

I never really approach any project or story thinking of themes first or what a certain character 'represents.' Maybe other writers do, but for me, it just starts with the characters and a certain emotion I want to convey. It usually isn't until I get deeper into a book and look back a bit that I start to see the themes, etc.

I think all television has to be about relationships and I don't think horror for the sake of it can work unless you're able to ground it in some kind of relationship.

A lot of crime writing suffers from treading water. I feel an obligation to move the character on and not repeat myself. I try to fit him into a different period and a different agenda. That way, you learn slightly more about his personal history in the tradition of the unreliable narrator. It makes it more challenging to write.

And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out.

Whether you're writing a horror show or a James Bond film, I think what bubbles beneath is interesting characterization. The colors that emerge through storytelling is what a dramatist does. There's always got to be something bubbling underneath that will erupt at some point.

What I keep searching for in movies, more and more, is the right gravity.

The fun thing about doing origin stories is you are introducing the audience to characters.

I don't have a favorite genre. I love to work and live vicariously through every character. It's all about trying to bring the character to life and get the story across in a way that resonates with the audience. It's always interesting and challenging in a gratifying and unique way.

I'm interested in telling the character's story, not my beliefs, political or otherwise.