Top 100 Nicolas Winding Refn Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The world needs change, change needs an activity. It has to be planted by a thought.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

2. “The power of art is as powerful as weapons of mass destruction; it’s just where war destroys, art inspires. But in order to inspire, you need to react to it. And, if it doesn’t penetrate your mind, you can’t react to it.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

3. “Like all art forms, film is a media as powerful as weapons of mass destruction; the only difference is that war destroys and film inspires.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

4. “Cinema is mass media, it is both overtly gross and exciting. It is our great mirror of society.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

5. “The act of creation can be an extreme violent experience.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

6. “In a way “Drive” is probably the greatest superhero movie ever made.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

7. “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.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

8. “I don’t have to go very far to see the power of beauty. Being desired, feeling desired is a very seductive aspect of our being.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

9. “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.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

10. “In the end, self-indulgence is very much about your ego and your vanity and your own id. The more you can indulge in it, the more pleasurable it becomes. And then when it feeds out, it’s able to penetrate the mind and create a reaction.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

11. “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.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

12. “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.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

13. “I woke up one day and I realized I wasn’t born beautiful, but my wife was, so I decided to make a horror film about it: what it would be like to be born beautiful.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

14. “I’m a very feminine man. I like feminine things. I don’t go to strip clubs. I don’t drink beer. I don’t play sports.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

15. “Nowadays, teenagers are so fast and quick to see through any form of manipulation. Sitting down and just thinking of something is like watching really bad pornography.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

16. “I have not seen “Batman v Superman,” unfortunately. It hasn’t been on the plane, as I’ve been flying a lot.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

17. “I feel that silence is the greatest word, ever. When you don’t talk, people begin to read things into you or you become what they long for. When you don’t talk, you almost become the mirror image of the other person.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

18. “I always say I have a Danish passport, but I am a New Yorker at heart.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

19. “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.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

20. “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.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

21. “We live in a beauty-obsessed culture, which on one hand is absolutely fabulous, but on the flip side, is also dangerously extreme.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

22. “The digital revolution is forever. They put importance on that option as well. With Amazon, you’re getting the best of both worlds, with a whole new playing field.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

23. “The artificial world that we create through images will essentially become real.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

24. “I like the early comic book characters more than the new ones.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

25. “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.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

26. “The kind of group mentality that we had lived under since the Second World War is starting to erupt, and the craving for individualism is now much stronger. It’s not as taboo anymore, as it was when I was younger.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

27. “I mean, what do you think creativity is? Nothing but self-indulgence. And the more self-indulgent it is, the more interesting it becomes. So I think that part of creativity is also falling in love with your own narcissism: accepting it, using it as an asset.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

28. “Love comes from the strangest places.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

29. “I’ve stopped showing actors what to actually do. I rather just talk to them about it. Then I usually play music. That’s a great way to convey inner emotion, bring the power of style and acting together. That’s really what it is, very good acting without talking.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

30. “I’m a fetish filmmaker, in that I don’t know why I do what I do, I just like to see things. When I figure out what I would like to see, I will put it in a film.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

31. “I don’t do drugs, and so music very much gets me going. When I do something, I think, “If it was a piece of music, what would it be?””

— Nicolas Winding Refn

32. “I’ve never really been on a date, because I’ve been with the same girl since my early twenties, but on our first date, I showed her The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. I was like, “Hey, you’ve got to see this!” And we’ve been together ever since.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

33. “The minute you celebrate narcissism, which on one hand is very complex, it’s very ridiculous. You have to love oneself with humor.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

34. “Ironically, even the fashion in New York or Paris or Milan or whatever, or music in Berlin, or art in, I don’t know, Madrid – all these scenes come and go. Everything leads back to Hollywood.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

35. “I don’t believe that art makes people violent in any way. I don’t. But I do believe art can show people how to be violent and that’s much more dangerous in a way.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

36. “I wanted to make a horror film about beauty.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

37. “If you create something that is essentially alien to you – as a man – and make a film about woman, the more I can surround myself with woman and combine it with my soul’s point of view, the more I become a stranger in a strange land.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

38. “Financing films that are demanding is a task, in itself. Because people are so afraid of taking any kind of chance, because they’re afraid the audience isn’t going to respond. But the audience is so hungry for anything that’s a bit original, personal, or different.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

39. “I’m a fetishist. I make films based on what I would like to see.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

40. “I am not a fan of improvisation, because it bores me. Working off a tight scenario gives you the confidence and ability to – why don’t we change this a little bit and bring it back to the script. You always discover things while shooting.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

41. “People very quickly define success due to the amount of money something makes. In the end, I think everyone is searching for that experience. That’s why we continue to go to the movies and watch television.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

42. “Creativity is very self-indulgent.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

43. “I think that television has become really, really interesting, in terms of character development. You can have 13 hours to develop a character, as opposed to 25 minutes in a movie. That excites me.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

44. “I think that I am a pornographer, meaning that I make movies based on what excites me and what I would like to see.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

45. “Man’s fear of sexuality is the basis of all horror from the male perspective.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

46. “I always think once you have the lead protagonist, you cast around that character.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

47. “How can creativity be bad? You can have, “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it,” but, in the end, it’s an individual experience. How can you even begin to define that? I find that sometimes extremely arrogant and counter-productive.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

48. “When you make something that everyone likes, it’s very easy to say, “Well, I’ll just repeat that.” Because that was easy. I have a formula. But creatively, it’s not very interesting.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

49. “You know the one I want to do? I want to make Batgirl.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn

50. “The fairy tale always takes place in worlds that are between, unidentifiable.”

— Nicolas Winding Refn