David Lynch Quotations | Page 3

I'm convinced we all are voyeurs. It's part of the detective thing. We want to know secrets and we want to know what goes on behind those windows. And not in a way that we would use to hurt anyone. There's an entertainment value to it, but at the same time we want to know: What do humans do? Do they do the same things as I do? It's a gaining of some sort of knowledge, I think.

I would rather not make a film than make one where I don't have final cut.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Being in darkness and confusion is interesting to me.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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].

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.

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.

Tied to consciousness are all positive qualities, so that ocean within is an ocean of unbounded intelligence, unbounded creativity, unbounded happiness, unbounded love, unbounded energy, and unbounded peace. And when students start expanding consciousness in those positive qualities, their relationships improve, their grades go up, their happiness goes up, the fighting and bullying stops, and things get very, very, very good.

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

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.

With each experience of the unbounded ocean of consciousness, you infuse it into your life and therefore expand whatever consciousness you had to begin with.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I didn't know anything about film when I first started - I was a painter - but I [always] felt that sound was just as important as the picture. The sound, picture, and ideas have to marry. If an idea carries with it a mood, sound is critical to making that mood.

My childhood was elegant homes, tree lined streets, the milkman, building backyard forts, droning airplanes, blue skies, picket fences, green grass, cherry trees. Middle America as it’s supposed to be. But on the cherry tree there’s this pitch oozing out – some black, some yellow – and millions of red ants crawling all over it. I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath.

Achievement is its own reward

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I like things to be orderly.

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

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

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.

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

Because you make a world that didn't exist before, and you can go into that world deeper and deeper. It's unbounded out there. One film takes you into one area, another film takes you into another area. There could be trillions, zillions of worlds that exist in the big space.

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.

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

When we transcend we are diving into a field of unbounded creativity. This is real creativity and when we experience that and grow in that, we can more easily find solutions to problems. We can get ideas for whatever it is we're working on. And we will get happier by transcending every day and we will find that we're happier doing almost anything. We'll get more energy to do our work.

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

Mystery is the number one conjurer of ideas.

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.

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

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.

The world is as you are.

Negativity is the enemy of creativity.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I love seeing people come out of darkness.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Absurdity is what I like most in life.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

There is an ocean of creativity within every human being.

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.

I just like going into strange worlds.

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.

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.

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.

New mysteries. New day. Fresh doughnuts.

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.

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.

We're taking our experience with Delphi and working with these materials to make batteries perform better than we've ever seen. Who would have thought?

There's no conflict, ... The first thing is the Kingdom of Heaven. And when you dive within, and you become part of the light, you're reaching that place. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Tell them there's an ocean of bliss! ... It's like diving within makes you experience subtler fields of consciousness, intellect and even love. And it makes you feel so good!

People out there know the schools are in trouble,

You're right on the money with that, ... We're all like detectives in life. There's something at the end of the trail that we're all looking for.

Alright David, it's been wonderful talking to you!