David Lynch Quotes

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

I love the quality, feel and history of film. I love the pictures of the giant cameras and the way it was.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The side effect of expanding consciousness is that negativity starts to evaporate; it goes away like darkness when you turn on a light. Many students have so much torment, stress, depression, sorrow and hate in them these days, but then they get this technique and the negativity starts to go away. They start to feel good because the torment is leaving. Their health gets better and they get happier, their comprehension and their ability to focus grow, their grades go up and a joy for life grows; all of which comes from within.

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

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

I like things to be orderly.

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.

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

I've said many, many, many unkind things about Philadelphia, and I meant every one.

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.

This idea comes to you, you can see it, but to accomplish it you need what I call a "setup." For example, you may need a working shop or a working painting studio. You may beed a working music studio. Or a computer room where you can write something. It's crucial to have a setup, so that, at any given moment, when you get an idea, you have the place and the tools to make it happen. If you don't have a setup, there are many times when you get the inspiration, the idea, but you have no tools, no place to put it together. And the idea just sits there and festers. Overtime, it will go away. You didn't filfill it
and that's just a heartache.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The business side of film has goofed up so many things, but even that's changing. It happened to the music industry and now it's happening to the film studios. It's crazy what's going on. But artists should have control of their work; especially if, as I always say, you never turn down a good idea and never take a bad idea.

Sometimes film kills the room to dream.

Television provides the opportunity for an ongoing story - the opportunity to meld the cast and the characters and a world, and to spend more time there.

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.

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.

When you get an idea and you fall in love with it there's not a whole lot of choice. You're going down a street and you meet this girl and you know it doesn't have to make any sense. Bingo! You're in love.

I always loved smokestack industry, and I love towns or cities that have grown up around factories.

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

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.

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.

Sex was like a world so mysterious to me, I really couldn't believe there was this fantastic texture to life that I was getting to do ... it has all these different levels, from lust and fearful, violent sex to the real spiritual thing at the other end. It's the key to some fantastic mystery of life.

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

Transcendental meditation is an ancient mental technique that allows any human being to dive within, transcend and experience the source of everything. It's such a blessing for the human being because that eternal field is a field of unbounded intelligence, creativity, happiness, love, energy and peace.

A poet could write volumes about diners, because they're so beautiful. They're brightly lit, with chrome and booths and Naugahyde and great waitresses. Now, it might not be so great in the health department, but I think diner food is really worth experiencing periodically.

The idea tells you everything. Lots of times I get ideas, I fall in love with them. Those ones you fall in love with are really special ideas. And, in some ways, I always say, when something's abstract, the abstractions are hard to put into words unless you're a poet. These ideas you somehow know. And cinema is a language that can say abstractions. I love stories, but I love stories that hold abstractions--that can hold abstractions. And cinema can say these difficult-to-say-in-words things. A lot of times, I don't know the meaning of the idea, and it drives me crazy. I think we should know the meaning of the idea. I think about them, and I tell this story about my first feature Eraserhead. I did not know what these things meant to me--really meant. And on that particular film, I started reading the Bible. And I'm reading the Bible, going along, and suddenly--there was a sentence. And I said, forget it! That's it. That's this thing. And so, I should know the meaning for me, but when things get abstract, it does me no good to say what it is. All viewers on the surface are all different. And we see something, and that's another place where intuition kicks in: an inner-knowingness. And so, you see a thing, you think about it, and you feel it, and you go and you sort of know something inside. And you can rely on that. Another thing I say is, if you go--after a film, withholding abstractions--to a coffee place--having coffee with your friends, someone will say something, and immed

Cinema is a medium that can translate ideas.

One change of attitude would change everything. If everyone realized that it could be a beautiful world and said, 'let's not do these things anymore - let's have fun.'

I supported myself by delivering the 'Wall Street Journal' and doing odd jobs. I love plumbing and carpentry.

Don't fight the darkness. Don't even worry about the darkness. Turn on the light and the darkness goes. Turn up that light of pure consciousness: Negativity goes.

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.

Stories hold conflict and contrast, highs and lows, life and death, and the human struggle and all kinds of things.

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.

I've always loved the electric guitar: to hold it and work it and hear what it does is unreal.

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.

I didn't watch much TV as a kid and I don' t watch it now. I don' t find anything beautiful or unique to the medium, and the only thing you can do on TV that you can't do in film is make a continuing story - which is so cool!

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

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

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

I always say Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is my biggest influence. But for painters, I like many, many painters, but I love Francis Bacon the most, and Edward Hopper.

...it's a truth of life that some things are not built so well and they become complicated and they need to be figured out and they're hard to figure out.

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.

In my case what happened is that within about two weeks of beginning meditation, the anger already started to go away. My wife came to me and said, "What's going on?" and I said, "What are you talking about?" To which she replied, "This anger, where did it go?" I didn't even realize that my anger had been going away.

I love the French. They're the biggest film buffs and protectors of cinema in the world. They really look out for the filmmaker and the rights of the filmmaker, and they believe in final cut.

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.

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

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

The beautiful thing is that when you catch one fish that you love, even if it's a little fish - a fragment of an idea - that fish will draw in other fish, and they'll hook onto it. Then you're on your way. Soon there are more and more and more fragments, and the whole thing emerges. But it starts with desire.

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.

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

I have to make what I see, whether it's a painting, a table, or a movie, or it's like a death and what would be the point of that?

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.

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

But if you know that you've got to be somewhere in half an hour, there's no way you can achieve that. So the art life means a freedom to have time for the good things to happen. There's not always a lot of time for other things.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Being in darkness and confusion is interesting to me. But behind it you can rise out of that and see things the way the really are. That there is some sort of truth to the whole thing, if you could just get to that point where you could see it, and live it, and feel it ... I think it is a long, long, way off. In the meantime there's suffering and darkness and confusion and absurdities, and it's people kind of going in circles. It's fantastic. It's like a strange carnival: it's a lot of fun, but it's a lot of pain.

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

I have the same answer all the time: My doctor told me not to think about these things.

I quit smoking in December. I'm really depressed about it. I love smoking, I love fire, I miss lighting cigarettes. I like the whole thing about it, to me it turns into the artist's life, and now people like Bloomberg have made animals out of smokers, and they think that if they stop smoking everyone will live forever.

Absurdity is what I like most in life.

When you get an idea, so many things come in that one moment. You could write the sound of that idea, or the sound of the room it's in. You could write the clothes the character is wearing, what they're saying, how they move, what they look like. Instead of making up, you're actually catching an idea, for a story, characters, place, and mood - all the stuff that comes.

In Hollywood, more often than not, they're making more kind of traditional films, stories that are understood by people. And the entire story is understood. And they become worried if even for one small moment something happens that is not understood by everyone.

Negativity is the enemy of creativity.

I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable.

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

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.

In a Town like Twin Peaks noone is innocent

Achievement is its own reward

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.

That state of simplest form of awareness alone, is worthy of seeing, hearing, contemplating and realizing.

There's always fear of the unknown where there's mystery

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.

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.

I didn't really grow up listening to blues, because I grew up in the Northwest. It wasn't really the center for blues.

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.

Cinema is a language. It can say things - big, abstract things. And I love that about it. I'm not always good with words. Some people are poets and have a beautiful way of saying things with words. But cinema is its own language. And with it you can say so many things, because you've got time and sequences. You've got dialogue. You've got music. You've got sound effects. You have so many tools. And you can express a feeling and a thought that can't be conveyed any other way. Its a magical medium. For me, it's so beautiful to think about these pictures and sounds flowing together in time and in sequence, making something that can be done only through cinema. Its not just words or music-it's a whole range of elements coming together and making something that didn't exist before. It's telling stories. It's devising a world, an experience, that people cannot have unless they see that film. When I catch an idea for a film, I fall in love with the way cinema can express it. I like a story that holds abstractions, and that's what cinema can do.

I love Bob Dylan. Who doesn't? He tapped into some kind of vein and it keeps on keeping on. There's nobody like him. He's unique, and just ... way out cool.

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.

If we didn't want to upset anyone, we would make films about sewing, but even that could be dangerous. But I think finally, in a film, it is how the balance is and the feelings are. But I think there has to be those contrasts and strong things within a film for the total experience.

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.

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.

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.

Mystery is the number one conjurer of ideas.

I love Christmas tree bulbs, and I started putting them in my paintings. You've got to plug this painting in, and it's got a rig in the back, so that each one can be replaced if it burns out.

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.

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

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.

Individual peace is the unit of world peace.