David Lynch Quotes:

You need contrast and conflict in order to tell a story. Stories need to have dark and light, turmoil, all those things. But that does not mean the filmmaker has to suffer in order to show the suffering. Stories should have the suffering, not the people.

Topics: Mean, Dark, Light, Storyline, Screenwriters

The big treasury is an ocean of infinite creativity. It's a creativity that creates everything that is a thing - it's mighty powerful creativity.

Topics: Powerful, Ocean, Creativity, Treasury

I started Transcendental Meditation in 1973 and have not missed a single meditation ever since. Twice a day, every day. It has given me effortless access to unlimited reserves of energy, creativity and happiness deep within.

Topics: Creativity, Meditation, Energy, Transcendental Meditation

The more you meditate the better life gets.

Topics: Better Life

It's so freeing, it's beautiful in a way, to have a great failure, there's nowhere to go but up.

Topics: Beautiful, Creativity, Way, Nowhere To Go But Up

I've seen so many cases where lives have been transformed for the good and heard so many stories about this. The technique of Transcendental Meditation really works for the human being.

Topics: Meditation, Technique, Stories, Transcendental Meditation

Mankind was not meant to suffer -- bliss is our nature. The individual is cosmic. Let's rock.

source: - "Interview With David Lynch: His Mission to Change the World Through Meditation". Interview with Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 9, 2014.

Topics: Rocks, Suffering, Bliss

Surface cures are not going to get rid of the torment that's inside.

Topics: Cures, Surface, Torment

We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.

Topics: Thinking, Imagination, Adults

Consciousness-based education, which I am helping to promote, is basically the same education that good schools are giving today with Transcendental Meditation added for the students, teachers, staff, and principal.

Topics: Teacher, School, Giving, Transcendental Meditation, Good School

Absurdity is what I like most in life.

source: - "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

Topics: Absurdity, Pulp, Absurdity Of Life

In the world there's a thing called collective consciousness. All of us billions of human beings together create that collective consciousness. With all the problems in our world, you can see that the collective consciousness is not so high.

source: - "His Mission to Change the World Through Meditation". Interview with Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 9, 2014.

Topics: Our World, Together, Problem, Collective Consciousness

Meditation is not a selfish thing. Even though you're diving in and experiencing the Self, you're not closing yourself off from the world. You're strengthening yourself, so that you can be more effective when you go back into the world.

Topics: Selfish, Meditation, World

If a human being is filled with happiness and positivity, this is what they radiate out into the world. We each affect our environment and that collective consciousness. The more people who are diving within and transcending and are getting that happiness and positivity, the better the world will be.

Topics: Positivity, People, World, Collective Consciousness

Domestic violence and violence against women in general seems to be a big problem everywhere in the world. It seems to me this problem comes from stress, pent up anger, frustration, and all kinds of negativity within human beings.

Topics: Stress, Frustration, Negativity, Anger Frustration

As collective consciousness goes higher and higher, all the differences in the world will be appreciated more and more. A definition of peace is unity in the midst of diversity. Or you could say happiness, love, and peace in the midst of all diversity. All the differences would be appreciated fully in the light of this peace.

Topics: Differences, Light, Diversity, Collective Consciousness

Transcending gives a human being a chance to think before acting. And experiencing this beautiful treasury within gets rid of torment and replaces it with happiness, inner peace, creativity intelligence, love, energy. This fuels a real good life and fuels an appreciation for all human beings. It's so powerful and it's a blessing for humanity.

Topics: Beautiful, Appreciation, Good Life

Many things happen that we don't know the significance of until a little bit later.

Topics: Littles, Significance, Things Happen

Negativity is the enemy of creativity. For instance if you're filled with depression, you can hardly even get out of bed, let alone feel like creating something. If you are filled with bitter, selfish anger, this occupies the mind and leaves little room for creative ideas.

source: - "Interview With David Lynch: His Mission to Change the World Through Meditation". Interview with Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 9, 2014.

Topics: Selfish, Creativity, Creating, Creativeness, Creating Something

Francis Bacon is one of my giant inspirations. I just love him to pieces.

Topics: Inspiration, Giants, Pieces

Humor is very interesting to me. My films are not comedies, but there's comedy in them from time to time, absurdities, just like in real life.

Topics: Real, Interesting, Comedy

Instead of instilling fear, if a company offered a way for everyone in the business to dive within-to start expanding energy and intelligence-people would work overtime for free. They would be far more creative. And the company would just leap forward. This is the way it can be. It's not the way it is, but it could be that way so easily.

Topics: Fear, People, Creative

Life is filled with abstractions, and the only way to make heads or tails of it is going through intuition.

Topics: Intuition, Tails, Way, Heads Or Tails

Transcendental Meditation is not a religion, it's not against any religion, it's for human beings, no matter what color, what religion, what walk of life. If you're a human being, it will work for you. And you will be very glad you found this technique and took advantage of it.

Topics: Color, Meditation, Technique, Transcendental Meditation

I like to remember things my own way. How I remembered them, not necessarily the way they happened.

Topics: Way, Remember, Remembered

All we really need is this technique of Transcendental Meditation, which allows any human being to easily and effortlessly transcend. When you get this technique of Transcendental Meditation, stay regular in your meditation twice a day and you will begin to rapidly unfold your full potential as a human being and see life get better and better and better.

Topics: Meditation, Get Better, Technique, Life Gets Better, Transcendental Meditation

This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top.

source: - "Fictional character: Lula Fortune". "Wild at Heart", 1990.

Topics: Movie, Inspiring, Heart, Wild At Heart

I felt I should have been the happiest person in the world. But I looked inside, and that happiness was only on the surface, not so deep. Beneath it was hollow. Up until that time, I had been thinking meditation was a joke, a fad and a waste of time.

Topics: Thinking, Meditation, World

Negativity is the enemy of creativity.

Topics: Creativity, Negativity, Enemy

I was creative before I started meditating, but I had, looking back, a weakness. I wasn't self-assured. I had a little bit of melancholy. I had a lot of anger for my situations in life, and I would take this out on my first wife.

Topics: Self, Wife, Creative, Situations In Life

Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see, one chance out between two worlds, fire walk with me!

Topics: Past, Two, Fire, Two Worlds, Twin Peaks

Every human being has consciousness, but not every human being has the same amount. The potential for each one of us human beings is infinite consciousness. This is called supreme enlightenment, and it just needs unfolding by transcending each day. The more consciousness we have, the better life is.

Topics: Enlightenment, Needs, Each Day, Infinite Consciousness

I'm not a real film buff. Unfortunately, I don't have time. I just don't go. And I become very nervous when I go to a film because I worry so much about the director and it is hard for me to digest my popcorn.

Topics: Real, Worry, Directors

I just love musicians. They're not all super-happy all the time, but when they're playing they're happy, and it's such a beautiful thing.

Topics: Beautiful, Musician, Super Happy

To me, a story can be both concrete and abstract, or a concrete story can hold abstractions. And abstractions are things that really can't be said so well with words.

Topics: Stories, Abstract, Said

It's crazy to close doors to any genres.

Topics: Crazy, Doors, Genre

You don't dive for specific solutions; you dive to enliven that ocean of consciousness. Then your intuition grows and you have a way of solving those problems-knowing when it's not quite right and knowing a way to make it feel correct for you. That capacity grows and things go much more smoothly.

Topics: Ocean, Knowing, Intuition

A lot of musicians like to do the bass and the drums with analog and get that tape distortion that's really beautiful. As far as the digital world goes - it's all going to end up there anyway, but when you hear vinyl it does a different thing to you. Nowadays, people do CDs and then vinyl so it's everything goes; it's a such a beautiful world.

Topics: Beautiful, Cds, People, Analog, Digital World

Every time I hear sounds, I see pictures. Then, I start getting ideas. It just drives me crazy

Topics: Crazy, Ideas, Sound, Drive Me Crazy

I'm not really into vinyl. There's something about that raw, birth of rock and roll feel that makes me crazy.

Topics: Crazy, Rocks, Rock And Roll

There is this unbounded, infinite, eternal, level, ocean, within every human being. Inner happiness comes with consciousness, bliss, intelligence comes with it. Creativity, love. Human beings have a potential and it has names like enlightenment or fulfilment, or liberation. True happiness is not out there, true happiness lies within. They say beauty is only skin deep but it's this stuff coming from the inside, absolute vibrant consciousness, absolute bliss

Topics: Lying, Ocean, Creativity, Skin Deep, Beauty Is Only Skin Deep

I don't think anybody really loves the sound of their own voice, but the tweakability is huge.

Topics: Thinking, Voice, Sound

See, a painting is much cheaper than making a film. And photography is, you know, way cheap. So if I get an idea for a film, there are many ways to get it together and go realise that film. There's really nothing to be afraid of.

Topics: Photography, Ideas, Together, Get It Together

It's important to listen to lots of different genres because you never know when something will get born out of it.

Topics: Important, Different, Born

I don't think it was pain that made [Vincent Van Gogh] great - I think his painting brought him whatever happiness he had.

Topics: Pain, Creativity, Thinking

I know club music has to be infectious and it's got to make you move.

Topics: Moving, Clubs

There's a safety in thinking in a diner. You can have your coffee or your milkshake, and you can go off into strange dark areas, and always come back to the safety of the diner.

Topics: Coffee, Dark, Thinking, Milkshakes

The world is as you are.

source: - David Lynch (2007). “Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity: 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.21, Penguin

Topics: Law Of Attraction, World, Attraction

The artist doesn't have to suffer to show suffering. Have it on the screen but have the people come out of the theater into a world of peace, of a beautiful world. They don't have to suffer in their lives.

Topics: Beautiful, Artist, People

I hate slick and pretty things. I prefer mistakes and accidents. Which is why I like things like cuts and bruises - they're like little flowers. I've always said that if you have a name for something, like 'cut' or 'bruise,' people will automatically be disturbed by it. But when you see the same thing in nature, and you don't know what it is, it can be very beautiful.

Topics: Beautiful, Hate, Mistake, Cuts And Bruises, Pretty Things

Transcendental Meditation is a mental technique, so you travel to this field through subtler levels of mind, and then subtler levels of intellect, and then, at the border of intellect, you transcend and experience it.

Topics: Meditation, Mind, Technique, Transcendental Meditation, Happiness Love

I love seeing people come out of darkness.

source: - David Lynch (2007). “Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity: 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.129, Penguin

Topics: People, Darkness

The side effect of expanding consciousness is that negativity starts to evaporate; it goes away like darkness when you turn on a light.

Topics: Light, Negativity, Darkness, Side Effects

Consciousness-Based Education is just plugging us all into the beautiful, eternal field within, and then watching things get better, which is what happens. It's a field of infinite, unbounded peace within every human being, and when you experience it, you enliven that peace.

Topics: Beautiful, Get Better, Fields, Levels Of Life, Peace Within

Achievement is its own reward

Topics: Success, Achievement, Rewards

The interesting thing that happens for many people when they first start meditating is that they'll be doing it for a few months, and they will begin to change, but the experience is so subtle that they're not even aware of it.

Topics: People, Interesting, Months, Meditating

To make the script, you need ideas, and for me a lot of times, a final script is made up of many fragments of ideas that came at different times.

Topics: Ideas, Different, Finals

You could say that spirituality is bliss, and bliss is physical happiness, emotional happiness, mental happiness, and spiritual happiness. And it's intense. It's an intense happiness. It brings you together with everything.

Topics: Spiritual, Emotional, Together, Spiritual Happiness

You don't need a special place to meditate. You can transcend anywhere in the world. The unified field is here, and there, and everywhere.

Topics: Special, Needs, World

Angelo Badalamenti brought me into the world of music and that's really what gave me permission to get into it even though I'm not a musician. It's just an intuitive thing for me.

Topics: Musician, World, Permission

If the people in a relationship were able to get rid of this torment within and replace it with happiness, love, and a sense of well-being, they would never think to hurt another human being. They would be filled with an understanding of others and an appreciation of others and have an ability to reconcile differences without any violence whatsoever, to reconcile differences in a very loving way, a very happy way.

Topics: Appreciation, Hurt, Thinking, Appreciation Of Others

I like things to be orderly.

The human being is like a light bulb. If a human being is super stressed, depressed and filled with negativity, this is what that human being radiates out into the world.

Topics: Light, Negativity, Stressed, Light Bulb

The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you're dead.

Topics: Reality, Ideas, Being True

I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath.

Topics: Beautiful, Ants, Looks, Beautiful World

I think that ideas exist outside of ourselves. I think somewhere, we're all connected off in some very abstract land. But somewhere between there and here ideas exist.

Topics: Thinking, Land, Ideas

The concept of absurdity is something I'm attracted to.

Topics: Absurdity

Mystery is the number one conjurer of ideas.

Topics: Ideas, Numbers, Mystery

It makes me uncomfortable to talk about meanings and things. It's better not to know so much about what things mean. Because the meaning, it's a very personal thing, and the meaning for me is different than the meaning for somebody else.

Topics: Mean, Different, Uncomfortable, Personal Things

Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be allowed to be, too.

Topics: Life Is, Film, Complicated

I like cappuccino, actually. But even a bad cup of coffee is better than no coffee at all.

Topics: Coffee, Cups, Cappuccino, Mornings And Coffee, Caffeine

Sometimes I get an idea for cinema. And when you get an idea that you fall in love with, this is a glorious day.

Topics: Falling In Love, Ideas, Cinema

I truly believe there is a field of peace within and that it can be enlivened and brought to the surface to be enjoyed by all.

Topics: Believe, Fields, Surface

The thing about meditation is: you become more and more you.

Topics: Meditation

Every viewer is going to get a different thing. That's the thing about painting, photography, cinema.

Topics: Photography, Different, Cinema

Every single person has within an ocean of pure vibrant consciousness. Every single human being can experience that - infinite intelligence, infinite creativity, infinite happiness, infinite energy, infinite dynamic peace.

Topics: Fun, Ocean, Creativity, Infinite Intelligence

Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there's humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd.

Topics: Running, Wall, Struggle

I love industry. Pipes. I love fluid and smoke. I love man-made things. I like to see people hard at work, and I like to see sludge and man-made waste.

Topics: Men, People, Waste, Man Made Things

Unfortunately, my ideas are not what you'd call commercial, and money really drives the boat these days. So I don't know what my future is. I don't have a clue what I'm going to be able to do in the world of cinema.

Topics: Ideas, Cinema, World

Intuition is the key to everything, in painting, filmmaking, business - everything. I think you could have an intellectual ability, but if you can sharpen your intuition, which they say is emotion and intellect joining together, then a knowingness occurs.

Topics: Creativity, Thinking, Keys, Joining Together

Music has fed me a lot of ideas... The film BLUE VELVET came out of Bobby Vinton's version of the song BLUE VELVET.

Topics: Song, Ideas, Blue, Blue Velvet

Films are 50 percent visual and 50 percent sound. Sometimes sound even overplays the visual.

Topics: Sound, Sometimes, Film

Somewhere in talking and rehearsing, there is a magical moment where actors catch a current, they're on the right road. If they really catch it, then whatever they do from then on is correct and it all comes out of them from that point on.

Topics: Talking, Actors, Moments, Rehearsing, Right Road

Everyone's got consciousness.. . Grow that ball of consciousness and all avenues of life improve. Your work just blossoms.

Topics: Balls, Consciousness, Grows

I have been 'diving within' through the Transcendental Meditation technique for over 30 years. It has changed my life, my world. I am not alone. Millions of other people of all ages, religions, and walks of life practice the technique and enjoy incredible benefits.

Topics: Years, Practice, People

There is an ocean of creativity within every human being.

Topics: Ocean, Creativity, Humans

All my movies are about strange worlds that you can't go into unless you build them and film them. That's what's so important about film to me. I just like going into strange worlds.

Topics: Important, World, Strange, Strange World, Film Directors

Everybody's got creativity. You just get more of it [when you meditate].

Topics: Creativity

I just like going into strange worlds.

Topics: World, Strange

I just have to think of Philadelphia now, and I get ideas, I hear the wind, and I'm off into the darkness somewhere.

Topics: Thinking, Wind, Ideas

When you practice Transcendental Meditation you are given a key to the deepest level of life.

Topics: Keys, Practice, Meditation, Levels Of Life, Transcendental Meditation

I like making films because I like to go into another world. I like to get lost into another world.

Topics: World, Film, Lost, Another World

Directors who have inspired me include Billy Wilder, Federico Fellini, lngmar Bergman, John Ford, Orson Welles, Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola and Ernst Lubitsch. In art school, I studied painters like Edward Hopper, who used urban motifs, Franz Kafka is my favorite novelist. My approach to film stems from my art background, as I go beyond the story to the sub-conscious mood created by sound and images.

Topics: Art, School, Sound, Hitchcock, Motifs

I like darkness and confusion and absurdity, but I like to know that there could be a little door that you could go out into a safe life area of happiness.

Topics: Doors, Confusion, Darkness

My movies are film-paintings - moving portraits captured on celluloid. I'll layer that with sound to create a unique mood -- like if the Mona Lisa opened her mouth, and there would be a wind, and she'd turn back and smile. It would be strange and beautiful.

Topics: Beautiful, Moving, Unique, Mona Lisa, Celluloid

We only dream of images we already have inside of us.

Topics: Dream

I have a profound admiration for Fellini. I met him lately and he's just fantastic. I feel very close to him even though he's very Italian. But his films could have been made in every country. When I say, I feel close to him, then also because we're both born on January 20th.

Topics: Country, Italian, Profound

When you sleep, you don`t control your dream. I like to dive into a dream world that I've made, a world I chose and that I have complete control over.

Topics: Dream, Sleep, World, Dream World

Stories have tangents; they open up and become different things. You can still have a structure, but you should leave room to dream. If you stay true to your ideas, filmmaking becomes an inside-out, honest kind of process. And if it's an honest thing for you, there's a chance that people will feel that, even if it's abstract.

Topics: Dream, Ideas, People

I let the actors work out their ideas before shooting, then tell them what attitudes I want. If a scene isn't honest, it stands out like a sore thumb.

Topics: Attitude, Ideas, Work Out

Well, I've been blessed with good hair, or at least some people think it is. It is the way it is, sort of does what it wants to. So, yeah, I guess it is [a metaphor for your views on art and life].

Topics: Art, Blessed, Thinking, Art And Life, Good Hair

Sleep is really important. You need to rest the physiology to be able to work weel and meditate well. When I don't get enough sleep, my meditations are duller. You may even dip into sleep at the beginning of your meditation, because you're settling down. But if you're well rested, you'll have a clearer deeper experience.

Topics: Sleep, Meditation, Important, Physiology, Enough Sleep

I have smoked marijuana, but I no longer do. I went to art school in the 1960s so you can imagine what was going on. Yet my friends were the ones who said, "No, no, no, David, don't take those drugs." I was pretty lucky.

Topics: Art, School, Marijuana

It's a simple thing he [Frank Daniel] taught me. If you want to make a feature film, you get ideas for 70 scenes. Put them on 3-by-5 cards. As soon as you have 70, you have a feature film.

Topics: Simple, Ideas, Cards

Freedom. It's like no constraints, an opening, and then barriers going away and lifting and breaking and experimentation and...it's like attempting for something.

Topics: Going Away, Attempting, Opening

My rule of thumb is, what Siskel and Ebert like, I don't, and vice versa.

Topics: Vices, Thumbs, Vice Versa

Chrysta Bell looks like a dream and Chrysta Bell sings like a dream. And the dream is coming true.

Topics: Dream, Looks, Bells

I love mysteries. To fall into a mystery and its danger ... everything becomes so intense in those moments. When most mysteries are solved, I feel tremendously let down. So I want things to feel solved up to a point, but there's got to be a certain percentage left over to keep the dream going. It's like at the end of Chinatown: The guy says, 'Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown.' You understand it, but you don't understand it, and it keeps that mystery alive. That's the most beautiful thing.

Topics: Beautiful, Dream, Fall, Chinatown

Man is evolving...but it's difficult to see his progress with a Western perception of time. The Hindus think of time in much larger segments. They watch the hour hand of the clock while we in the West are preoccupied with the second hand.

Topics: Men, Thinking, Hands

Cigarettes are pretty much my worst vice, and I even stopped smoking for 20 years. I spend most of my free time with my family and working on art.

Topics: Art, Years, Smoking

The more unknowable the mystery, the more beautiful it is.

Topics: Beautiful, Mystery

I find the joy of the 'doing' increases. Creativity increases. Intuition increases. The pleasure of life grows. And negativity recedes.

Topics: Creativity, Negativity, Joy, Pleasures Of Life

In my mind it's so much fun to have something that has clues and is mysterious - something that is understood intuitively rather than just being spoon-fed to you. That's the beauty of cinema, and it's hardly ever even tried. These days, most films are pretty easily understood, and so people's minds stop working.

Topics: Fun, People, Mind

Every teacher of Transcendental Meditation is a hero.

Topics: Teacher, Hero, Meditation

The artist does not have to suffer to show suffering.

Topics: Artist, Suffering, Doe

I'm not comfortable with words. I love images ,and I love sounds, and I love feelings. I like the idea of intuition. I think a lot of things in life are understood that way. But you internalize these things; they don't really pop out. Certain things are built inside - little areas of understanding. I feel that I live in darkness and confusion, and I'm trying, like we all are, to make some sort of sense of it.

Topics: Thinking, Ideas, Confusion, Love Feeling, Images Of Love

Lately I feel films are more and more like music. Music deals with abstractions and, like film, it involves time. It has many different movements, it has much contrast. And through music you learn that, in order to get a particular beautiful feeling, you have to have started far back, arranging certain things in a certain way. You can't just cut to it.

Topics: Beautiful, Cutting, Order

My mother refused to give me coloring books as a child. She probably saved me, Because when you think about it, what a coloring book does is completely kill creativity.

Topics: Mother, Children, Book

But if you can expand that consciousness, make it grow, then when you read about that book, you'll have more understanding; when you look out, more awareness; when you wake up, more wakefulness; as you go about your day, more inner happiness.

Topics: Book, Understanding, Looks, Golf Ball

Desire for an idea is like bait. When you're fishing, you have to have patience. You bait your hook, and then you wait. The desire is the bait that pulls those fish in-those ideas.

Topics: Fishing, Ideas, Waiting

Be true to yourself. Don't take no for an answer. And start your Transcendental Meditation.

Topics: Meditation, Answers, Be True To Yourself, Transcendental Meditation

I'm lost in a transition. The old is dead, and I don't know what the new is. The only way to find the new is to start different things and see if there's something that can come out of experimentation. It's somewhat unsettling, but it's a hopeful thing in a way. I've been here before, lots of times.

Topics: Creativity, Hopeful, Transition

Individual peace is the unit of world peace.

Topics: World, Individual, Units

I love child things because there's so much mystery when you're a child. When you're a child, something as simple as a tree doesn't make sense. You see it in the distance and it looks small, but as you go closer, it seems to grow - you haven't got a handle on the rules when you're a child. We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experienced is a narrowing of the imagination.

Topics: Children, Distance, Creativity, Children Love

I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me. People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it. That's why I love coffee shops and public places - I mean, they're all out there.

Topics: Coffee, Mean, Creativity, Coffee Shop, I Love Coffee

Being in darkness and confusion is interesting to me.

Topics: Interesting, Confusion, Darkness

In film, life-and-death struggles make you sit up, lean forward a little bit. They amplify things happening, in smaller ways, in all of us. These things show up in relationships. They show up in struggles and bring them to a critical point.

Topics: Struggle, Life And Death, Amplify

The only thing that disturbs me is that many psychopaths say they had a very happy childhood.

Topics: Childhood, Psychopath, Very Happy, Happy Childhood

People say my films are dark. But like lightness, darkness stems from a reflection of the world. The thing is, I get these ideas that I truly fall in love with. And a good movie idea is often like a girl you're in love with, but you know she's not the kind of girl you bring home to your parents, because they sometimes hold some dark and troubling things.

Topics: Girl, Falling In Love, Home

I don't know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn't make sense.

Topics: Art, People, Facts

It's important that a film is loud and I hope many people agree. You should be inside of a film when you go into a theater. It should surround you, envelope you, so you can live inside a dream.

Topics: Dream, People, Important

Forget being the best of anything. That's the fruit of the action, and you do the work -they say- for the doing, not the fruit. You can never really know how it's gonna turn out in the world but you know if you enjoy doing it. And ideas start flowing and you start getting, you know, excited about stuff. Then you're having a great time in the doing and that's what it's all about. If you don't enjoy the doing, then do something else.

Topics: Creativity, Ideas, Stuff

I like things that go into hidden, mysterious places, places I want to explore that are very disturbing. In that disturbing thing, there is sometimes tremendous poetry and truth.

Topics: Creativity, Want, Mysterious, Disturbing Things

There is an ocean of pure vibrant consciousness inside each one of us.

Topics: Ocean, Consciousness

Don't make a film if it can't be the film you want to make. It's a joke, and a sick joke, and it'll kill you.

Topics: Sick, Want, Film

There's so many problems in our world, so much negativity. Don't worry about the darkness - turn on the light and the darkness automatically goes. Ramp up the light of unity within - help do that for yourself, help do that for the world and then we're really doing something, we're doing something that brings that light of unity.

Topics: Light, Our World, Worry, Ramp

The ocean of solutions is within, enliven that. ... It's a world of clues, a world of mystery but the mystery can get solved, you can find a lot of answers for these things within.

Topics: Ocean, Answers, World

A film is its own thing and in an ideal world I think a film should be discovered knowing nothing and nothing should be added to it and nothing should be subtracted from it.

Topics: Thinking, Knowing, World, Knowing Nothing, Ideal World

Every single thing in the world that was made by anyone started with an idea. So to catch one that is powerful enough to fall in love with, it is one of the most beautiful experiences. It's like being jolted with electricity and knowledge at the same time.

Topics: Beautiful, Falling In Love, Powerful, Beautiful Experiences

So much of what happened to me is good fortune. But I would say: Try to get a job that gives you some time; get your sleep and a little bit of food; and work as much as you can. There's so much enjoyment in doing what you love. Maybe this will open doors, and you'll find a way to do what you love.

Topics: Jobs, Work, Sleep

Been trying the soapy water and instant coffee method. Works somewhat, but boy it tastes terrible. I don't know how you guys can stand it. I'm going back to milk and espresso for my cappas.

Topics: Coffee, Boys, Espresso, Instant Coffee, Barista

We all have at least two sides. The world we live in is a world of opposites. And the trick is to reconcile those opposing things. I've always liked both sides. In order to appreciate one you have to know the other. The more darkness you can gather up, the more light you can see too.

Topics: Creativity, Two Sides, Light

The day you catch an idea you fall in love with, even a small one, is a beautiful day.

Topics: Beautiful, Falling In Love, Ideas, Beautiful Day

I long for a kind of quiet where I can just drift and dream. I always say getting inspiration is like fishing. If you're quiet and sitting there and you have the right bait, you're going to catch a fish eventually. Ideas are sort of like that. You never know when they're going to hit you.

Topics: Dream, Inspiration, Fishing

You've got to let accidents and strange things happen - let it work, so it's got an organic sort of quality ... By trying to remove yourself you can see some fantastic things sometimes.

Topics: Creativity, Trying, Quality

Most of Hollywood is about making money - and I love money, but I don't make the films thinking about money...

Topics: Thinking, Hollywood, Film, I Love Money

I think true love is not only true personal love but totality of love, universal love - to be in love with everything manifest and everything unmanifest.

Topics: Love Is, Thinking, Universal Love, Personal Love

New mysteries. New day. Fresh doughnuts.

Topics: New Day, Mystery, Doughnut

Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure.They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.

source: - "Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity". Book by David Lynch, December 27, 2007.

Topics: Beautiful, Powerful, Ideas, Shallow Water

Death in my mind isn't a finality. There's a continuum: It's like at night, you go to sleep and in the daytime you wake up, or whenever you wake up, and it's a new day.

Topics: Sleep, Night, New Day, Continuum

We're like lightbulbs. If bliss starts growing inside you, it's like a light; it affects the environment.

source: - David Lynch (2007). “Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity: 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.105, Penguin

Topics: Light, Growing, Environment

Black has depth.. you can go into it.. And you start seeing what you're afraid of. You start seeing what you love, and it becomes like a dream.

Topics: Dream, Black, Depth

Inside, we are ageless and when we talk to ourselves, it’s the same age of the person we were talking to when we were little. It’s the body that is changing around that ageless center.

Topics: Talking, Age, Body, Ageless

Float with me in the world of ether.

Topics: World, Floats

I learned that just beneath the surface there's another world, and still different worlds as you dig deeper. I knew it as a kid, but I couldn't find the proof. It was just a kind of feeling. There is goodness in blue skies and flowers, but another force - a wild pain and decay - also accompanies everything.

source: - "Fifty Contemporary Film Directors". Book edited by Yvonne Tasker, p. 259, 2010.

Topics: Pain, Flower, Creativity

It’s better not to know so much about what things mean or how they might be interpreted or you’ll be too afraid to let things keep happening.

source: - "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

Topics: Mean, Might, Knows

I'm not a political person. I don't understand politics, I don't understand the concept of two sides and I think that probably there's good on both sides, bad on both sides, and there's a middle ground, but it never seems to come to the middle ground and it's very frustrating watching it and seemingly we're not moving forward.

source: - "Scene by Scene" on BBC 2, 1999.

Topics: Moving, Thinking, Two Sides

What do you fear, most of all? The possibility that love may not be enough.

Topics: Fear, May, Enough

I don't like Thomas Edison. I'm a fan of Nicolai Tesla.

source: - "The interview: David Lynch" by Gaby Wood and Hazel Sheffield, www.theguardian.com. February 28, 2009.

Topics: Fans, Tesla

I like to make films because I like to go into another world. I like to get lost in another world. And film to me is a magical medium that makes you dream... allows you to dream in the dark. It's just a fantastic thing, to get lost inside the world of film.

source: - Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

Topics: Inspirational, Motivational, Dream

Tenderness can be just as abstract as insanity.

Topics: Insanity, Abstract, Tenderness

Film noir has a mood that everyone can feel. It’s people in trouble, at night, with a little bit of wind and the right kind of music. It’s a beautiful thing.

Topics: Beautiful, Night, Wind, Film Noir

The technology can change, but storytelling remains the same. It's just a digital world now instead of an analog world, but now the storytelling's the same. You got different tools. That's all.

source: - Source: www.indiewire.com

Topics: Technology, Different, World

In today’s world of fear and uncertainty, every child should have one class period a day to dive within himself and experience the field of silence - bliss - the enormous reservoir of energy and intelligence that is deep within all of us. This is the way to save the coming generation.

source: - "Paul McCartney signs on for NYC benefit" by Jonathan Cohen, www.hollywoodreporter.com. January 27, 2009.

Topics: Children, Should Have, Class

This is a donut. It is very sweet, and very good. But if you've never tasted a donut, you wouldn't really know how sweet and how good a donut is... meditation is like that. Transcendental Meditation gives an experience much sweeter than the sweetness of this donut.

Topics: Sweet, Giving, Meditation, Donuts, Transcendental Meditation

If you have a golf-ball-sized consciousness, when you read a book, you'll have a golf-ball-sized understanding; when you look out a window, a golf-ball-sized awareness, when you wake up in the morning, a golf-ball-sized wakefulness; and as you go about your day, a golf-ball-sized inner happiness. But if you can expand that consciousness, make it grow, then when you read about that book, you'll have more understanding; when you look out, more awareness; when you wake up, more wakefulness; as you go about your day, more inner happiness.

source: - David Lynch (2007). “Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity: 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.28, Penguin

Topics: Happiness, Morning, Book, Golf Ball

Intuition is knowingness, and this field of unbounded knowing, of knowingness, is within every human being. You start tapping into that and it becomes an ocean of solutions.

source: - "An Ocean of Solutions: The David Lynch Interview". Interview with Chris Grosso, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

Topics: Ocean, Knowing, Intuition

I love two-lane highways. They say something about the way things used to be, and about areas that don't have a lot of people. On those two-lanes at night you get the sense of moving into the unknown, and that's as thrilling a sense as human beings can have.

Topics: Moving, Night, Two

Sugar does make people happy, but then you fall off the edge after a few minutes, so I've really pretty much cut it out of my diet. Except for cupcakes. I like those.

Topics: Fall, Cutting, Cupcakes, Really Pretty, Making People Happy

Cinema is a medium that can translate ideas. But wood can translate ideas, too. You have wood and then you get a chair. Some ideas are for different things.

source: - Source: www.avclub.com

Topics: Ideas, Different, Cinema

I love super crispy, almost burned, snapping-crispy bacon.

Topics: Snapping, Burned

Stories always have held conflicts and contrasts, highs and lows, life and death situations. And there can be much suffering in stories, but now we say the artist doesn’t have to suffer to show suffering. You just have to understand the human condition, understand the suffering.

Topics: Artist, Life And Death, Suffering, Highs And Lows

Transcendental meditation is like a car, a vehicle that allows you to go within. It's a mental technique.

source: - Interview with Andy Battaglia, www.avclub.com. January 23, 2007.

Topics: Car, Meditation, Technique, Transcendental Meditation

Let's get rid of the suffering and bring real peace, which is not just the absence of war, but the absence of all negativity.

source: - Twitter post from Sep 14, 2011

Topics: Real, War, Negativity

My cow is not pretty, but it is pretty to me.

Topics: Cows, Not Pretty

Sex is a doorway to something so powerful and mystical, but movies usually depict it in a completely flat way.

source: - Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

Topics: Sex, Powerful, Doorways

When the going gets tough, everyone leaves.

Topics: Tough, Going Gets Tough

We're all like detectives. We want to figure things out. Life, you know, we want to figure out life, and we want to figure out what's going on, so it's beautiful. It's beautiful that people are thinking.

source: - Source: www.indiewire.com

Topics: Beautiful, Thinking, People

The ideas dictate everything.

source: - David Lynch, Richard A. Barney (2009). “David Lynch: Interviews”, p.58, Univ. Press of Mississippi

Topics: Ideas

During the course of a day, some dark feeling comes, maybe some sadness comes, some thrill, some great happiness, some strange humor. Cinema can embrace all that in one story, just as the story of life.

source: - "The Surreal Careers of David Lynch". Interview with Christopher Bollen and Meredith Danluck, www.interviewmagazine.com. July 20, 2012.

Topics: Sadness, Dark, Feelings

Anger, stress, tension, depression, sorrow, hate, fear - these things start to retreat. And for a filmmaker, having this negativity lift away is money in the bank. When you're suffering you can't create.

Topics: Hate, Stress, Negativity

I'm not any different than anybody else. But I do see a world, for me, that's getting better and better, not worse and worse. And I believe that world peace is coming quicker than we think. And I believe that people are not only yearning for it but will see a way to get it and help that way to come sooner. And it's going to be beautiful.

source: - "David Lynch: A Detailed Look At A 'Dark Night'". Interview With Scott Simon, www.npr.org. July 11, 2009.

Topics: Beautiful, Believe, Thinking

The cinema is really built for the big screen and big sound, so that a person can go into another world and have an experience.

source: - "The Visionary". Interview with Deborah Solomon, www.nytimes.com. November 21, 2008.

Topics: Sound, Cinema, World, Big Screen

A lot of artists think they want anger. But a real, strong, bitter anger occupies the mind, leaving no room for creativity.

Topics: Strong, Real, Creativity

I thought when I started meditation that I was going to get real calm and peaceful and it's going to be over. It's not that way; it's so energetic. That's where all the energy and creativity is.

source: - Interview With Mark Kermode, www.theguardian.com. February 8, 2007.

Topics: Real, Creativity, Meditation

If you keep your eye on the doughnut and do your work, that's all you can control. You can't control any of what's out there, outside yourself.

source: - David Lynch (2007). “Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity: 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.36, Penguin

Topics: Eye, Doughnut, Ifs

When you have something that brings a real emotion, that's the power of cinema.

Topics: Real, Cinema, Emotion, Real Emotion

They say the full potential of the human being is called enlightenment, which is infinite consciousness, infinite happiness, zero negativity, zero dying, complete freedom, total fulfillment, and being at one with everything. You can say it's God realization, or you can say you sit at the feet of the Lord as master of all you survey. You could say it's totality, total knowledge, and that you are that totality. This is every human being's birthright: to one day enjoy supreme enlightenment, unity. It's like the big graduation.

source: - "An Ocean of Solutions: The David Lynch Interview". Interview with Chris Grosso, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

Topics: Zero, Feet, Negativity, Infinite Consciousness, Complete Freedom

I believe in creative control. No matter what anyone makes, they should have control over it.

source: - Interview with Scott Thill, www.wired.com. March 10, 2006.

Topics: Believe, Should Have, Creative

The worst thing about this modern world is that people think you get killed on television with zero pain and zero blood. It must enter into kids' heads that it's not very messy to kill somebody, and it doesn't hurt that much. That's a real sickness to me. That's a real sick thing.

source: - David Lynch, Richard A. Barney (2009). “David Lynch: Interviews”, p.58, Univ. Press of Mississippi

Topics: Hurt, Zero, Pain

Everyone is on the internet but they're not all talking with each other. There are groups upon groups out there, but they don't talk to one another. So while the internet brings everyone into a shared space, it does not necessarily bring them together.

source: - "David Lynch Interviews - Uncut". Interview with Scott Thill, www.wired.com. March 10, 2006.

Topics: Talking, Space, Together

I don't like the word ironic. I like the word absurdity, and I don't really understand the word 'irony' too much. The irony comes when you try to verbalize the absurd. When irony happens without words, it's much more exalted.

source: - "Inland Empire: the blogosphere's verdict" by Henrietta Clancy, www.theguardian.com. March 12, 2007.

Topics: Ironic, Trying, Too Much

I like the saying: "The world is as you are." And I think films are as you are. That's why, although the frames of a film are always the same - the same number, in the same sequence, with the same sounds - every screening is different. The difference is sometimes subtle but it's there. It depends on the audience. There is a circle that goes from the audience to the film and back. Each person is looking and thinking and feeling and coming up with his or her own sense of things. And it's probably different from what I fell in love with.

source: - David Lynch (2007). “Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity: 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.21, Penguin

Topics: Thinking, Circles, Differences

Dark things have always existed but they used to be in a proper balance with good when life was slower.

source: - David Lynch, Richard A. Barney (2009). “David Lynch: Interviews”, p.130, Univ. Press of Mississippi

Topics: Dark, Balance, Used, Dark Things

I'm obsessed with textures. We're surrounded by so much vinyl that I find myself constantly in pursuit of other textures. One time I removed all the hair from a mouse with Nair-Hair just to see what it looked like. And it looked beautiful.

Topics: Beautiful, Hair, Texture

We want to generate the electricity of peace through music, and it’s a thrill to know that the super-creative, enthusiastic musicians of our world are with us to achieve this goal.

Topics: Our World, Goal, Creative

A filmmaker doesn't have to suffer to show suffering. You just have to understand it. You don't have to die to shoot a death scene.

source: - "The Visionary". Interview With Deborah Solomon, www.nytimes.com. November 21, 2008.

Topics: Suffering, Scene, Filmmaker

They say that negative things like stress, anxiety, tension, sorrow, and depression "squeeze the tube" so ideas don't flow through it. But if you get rid of that negativity, which goes away naturally when you transcend every day, these ideas are more freely flowing, and you get happy in the doing. You get fresh and inspiring ideas, and a bigger picture starts to emerge of the world and life. It's very good for the artist, businessman, fisherman, and any kind of person really.

source: - "An Ocean of Solutions: The David Lynch Interview". Interview with Chris Grosso, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

Topics: Stress, Artist, Ideas, Bigger Picture, World And Life

I don't really follow television so much, but in the old days there was a certain way TV was, and it wasn't really like cinema. I don't know how many ways it was different or the same, but it was not quite like cinema. Now, cinema can happen on television.

source: - Source: www.indiewire.com

Topics: Different

When you make your first film, it's really hard in some ways. You're just nowhere. But then you have something. If you have a success, then you might be looking to take a fall. If you had a fall, you get a certain kind of euphoria because you're not dead, so you can still do it again. It's about how you go through the processes. Do you enjoy that "doing"? Is it getting less fun or more fun?

source: - Source: film.avclub.com

Topics: Fun, Fall, Kind, Euphoria