Nicolas Winding Refn Quotes

I wanted to make something that I wanted to hear that I wasn't hearing.

I do make films for personal reasons.

I make films for myself, first and foremost, just because it is such a personal experience, and it's something I really have to want to do and feel connected to.

When you're making a movie, you can't think anybody will ever see it. You've just got to make a movie for the values it has. The greatest films were made because someone really wanted to make them. And, hopefully, the audience will show up, too.

Being part of 'Natural Nylon' is a great way to have an influence on the films that get out there. I love films and it gives me an input.

I wanted to write.

Motivation is just this potion to create stuff, a compulsion to express the truth of my own experiences in this life.

Film has the potential of allowing me to explore my own ideas, which I find very attractive.

Why do we make records? Because we want to say something. Why are you in art? Because you want to say something. The second you don't have anything to say, you stop making art - you might start making product. And I'm interested in being an artist.

Initially, I started writing music because I wanted to express my thoughts and get what was going on in my head out to the world.

I just wrote what I wanted to be reading.

Go home, pick up your video camera, and make a film.

You definitely do not do films for that particular reason. You do them for yourself, for your satisfaction of creating this thing with characters and watching these characters take on real life - that's all you care about.

I love making genre films. It's something I've really been attracted to since I was a kid, mostly because, as a kid, it was forbidden fruit.

You don't have to know how to make a movie. If you truly love cinema with all your heart and with enough passion, you can't help but make a good movie.

With music, you can portray a certain thing, but in film, sometimes you have to let yourself go to a point where that can be attractive to a person, that you're willing to let yourself go that much. It works both ways.

My films really have to be a part of a whole body of work that says something to me.

I feel like at the end of the day, as entertaining as movies are, when you're part of them in a way, it's this beautiful art form and that's what it feels like for me. I'm not a painter, but I can express myself visually in a way that allows me to artistically create.

The real question is what to live for. And I can't answer it. Except another one of your records. And another chance for me to write. Art for art's sake, corny as that sounds.

There's no excuse not to make films on weekends with friends.

People begin to write in order to create what they have not found and, a little bit, to give something back.

I have often thought it was very arrogant to suppose you could make a film for anybody but yourself.

I think film was my passion without it being declared like a job that I could have, or a career that I could have.

I'm happy - at times - making films. I'm certainly unhappy not making films.

I write because I need to share my thoughts with the audience.