Nicolas Winding Refn Quotes

No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.

Film is such a powerful medium. It can really affect change; you can affect so many different people in different ways.

Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.

Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change - it can not only move us, it makes us move.

I may be alone in this, but I do sense the power of film, in that movies have the ability to literally change people's minds. That's pretty powerful stuff when you consider that.

Through a painting we can see the whole world.

I felt film is art and there are people that constructed that art - and that made me want to be a filmmaker.

Photography is truth.

The art of making a film and its content are far more interesting to me than the result or impact.

The cinema is a place of intrinsic indiscernibility between art and non-art.

The power of music is still with me, every day. It's one of the most inspiring things available in the world. I write with music. I write scenes in movies that hopefully can earn the use of some songs that are powerful to me. But, I think it just came from being affected by strong, personal art.

Movies have an enormous power to open the mind and the heart and everything. You are sitting and seeing something moving in front of you, and then your mind goes into a trance. You are completely there. It's a real great art; it's not only a business. It's to open the mind, to understand this mystery within reality. This is why we need it.

Film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates.

Movies are more likely than literature to reach deep feelings in people.

Images are really powerful. People fall in love with images, and as a way of falling in love with someone because they're like an image.

I thought for a long time that within art, that you would come up with an idea, you would labor over it intensely until you felt like it was done, and then when you finished it, that was the final stage. I started to realize that that's not actually the completion of it. The final stage of any kind of art is to really lose control over it and let it affect other people. You can't control the effect that it has on people, but you hope that it has some sort of reaction. You just hope that they're not indifferent to it, you wanna make people feel something, whether it's love or hate.

It's amazing how everyone has their different ways of working. I like hearing about that process, reading about it. I have so much appreciation for movies because I understand how hard it is to make one. There is always something I gain from watching a movie, whether it's a silly romantic comedy or an art film.

One reason I was interested in photography was to get away from the preciousness of the art object.

I am seeing a resurgence of entertainment that not only entertains, but inspires, evokes, and moves. I am seeing strength in the ability of artistic expression to change our future.

I think art parallels life; it is not a report on nature or on intimate disclosure of inner secrets. Color, in my opinion, behaves like man -- in two distinct ways: first in self-realization and then in the realization of relationships with others.

Not only is the motion picture an art, but it is the one entirely new art that has been evolved on this planet for hundreds of years. It is the only art at which we of this generation have any possible chance to greatly excel.

I've ended up as a filmmaker who really loves the movie part of movies. That time in my life was a big influence on the kind of movies that I ended up making. I always think I'm going to make a movie that's gritty and real, but then I make a movie that's like an opera. I fight it at first and then that's just the way it is.

Art is art. Television has elevated itself, in certain ways, but it's always pushed people's consciousness.

The true test of all the arts is not solely whether the production is a true copy of nature, but whether it answers the end of art, which is to produce a pleasing effect upon the mind.

The works of the great artists are silent books of eternal truths.