Top 100 David Lynch Quotes
#1. When you have something that brings a real emotion, that's the power of cinema.
David Lynch
#2. 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.
David Lynch
#3. 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.
David Lynch
#5. The day you catch an idea you fall in love with, even a small one, is a beautiful day.
David Lynch
#6. Surface cures are not going to get rid of the torment that's inside.
David Lynch
#7. I love paint. I like watercolours. I like acrylic paint ... a little bit. I like house paint. I like oil-based paint, and I love oil paint. I love the smell of turpentine and I like that world of oil paint very, very, very much.
David Lynch
#8. I've always loved the electric guitar: to hold it and work it and hear what it does is unreal.
David Lynch
#9. 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.
David Lynch
#10. Sometimes film kills the room to dream.
David Lynch
#11. 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.
David Lynch
#12. 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.
David Lynch
#13. More and more people are seeing the films on computers - lousy sound, lousy picture - and they think they've seen the film, but they really haven't.
David Lynch
#14. When I was little in Spokane, Washington I drew all the time ... and my father would bring paper home ... and I mostly drew browning automatic water-cooled sub-machine guns ... that was my favorite
David Lynch
#15. 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.
David Lynch
#16. Music has fed me a lot of ideas ... The film BLUE VELVET came out of Bobby Vinton's version of the song BLUE VELVET.
David Lynch
#17. 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.
David Lynch
#18. 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.
David Lynch
#19. 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.
David Lynch
#20. 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.
David Lynch
#21. 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.
David Lynch
#22. 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.
David Lynch
#23. We only dream of images we already have inside of us.
David Lynch
#24. I like L.A. because of the light. The light makes me feel so good. It's really beautiful. And there's something about L.A. being so spread out that gives you a feeling of freedom. Light and freedom.
David Lynch
#25. I believe in creative control. No matter what anyone makes, they should have control over it.
David Lynch
#26. 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].
David Lynch
#27. Eraserhead is my most spiritual movie. No one understands when I say that, but it is.
David Lynch
#28. Intuition is seeing the solution.....its emotion and intellect going together.
David Lynch
#29. 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.
David Lynch
#30. A lot of music doesn't do one thing or another. It just doesn't do anything. Then there are those pieces of music that thrill your soul. It's such a wide range, and it's really interesting that we all love different things.
David Lynch
#31. The house is a place where things can go wrong.
David Lynch
#32. 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.
David Lynch
#33. 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.
David Lynch
#34. 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.
David Lynch
#35. I would rather not make a film than make one where I don't have final cut.
David Lynch
#36. 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.
David Lynch
#37. When you practice Transcendental Meditation you are given a key to the deepest level of life.
David Lynch
#38. 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.
David Lynch
#39. Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see, one chance out between two worlds, fire walk with me!
David Lynch
#40. 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.
David Lynch
#41. I always loved smokestack industry, and I love towns or cities that have grown up around factories.
David Lynch
#42. We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.
David Lynch
#43. 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.
David Lynch
#44. The mantra that you're given in Transcendental Meditation you keep to yourself. The reason being, true happiness is not out there, true happiness lies within.
David Lynch
#45. 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.
David Lynch
#46. 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.
David Lynch
#47. New mysteries. New day. Fresh doughnuts.
David Lynch
#48. Sometimes I get an idea for cinema. And when you get an idea that you fall in love with, this is a glorious day.
David Lynch
#49. The artist does not have to suffer to show suffering.
David Lynch
#50. 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.
David Lynch
#52. Somehow, the French got this idea of the starving artist. Very romantic, except it's not so romantic for the starving artist.
David Lynch
#53. 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.
David Lynch
#54. Most of Hollywood is about making money - and I love money, but I don't make the films thinking about money.
David Lynch
#55. 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.
David Lynch
#56. Happy accidents are real gifts, and they can open the door to a future that didn't even exist. It's kind of nice sometimes to set up something to encourage or allow happy accidents to happen.
David Lynch
#57. 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.
David Lynch
#58. I don't know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn't make sense.
David Lynch
#59. Music as background to me becomes like a mosquito, an insect. In the studio we have big speakers, and to me that's the way music should be listened to. When I listen to music, I want to just listen to music.
David Lynch
#60. 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.
David Lynch
#61. 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.
David Lynch
#62. Building a set is like building a place, but it's a temporary place, because sets usually get torn down. Kind of unfortunate.
David Lynch
#63. In a Town like Twin Peaks noone is innocent
David Lynch
#64. There is an ocean of creativity within every human being.
David Lynch
#65. An artist makes a painting, and nobody bugs him or her about it. It's just you and your painting. To me, that's the way it should be with film as well.
David Lynch
#66. 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.
David Lynch
#67. The only thing that disturbs me is that many psychopaths say they had a very happy childhood.
David Lynch
#68. The more unknowable the mystery, the more beautiful it is.
David Lynch
#69. Chrysta Bell looks like a dream and Chrysta Bell sings like a dream. And the dream is coming true.
David Lynch
#70. This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top.
David Lynch
#71. 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.
David Lynch
#72. Mankind was not meant to suffer
bliss is our nature. The individual is cosmic. Let's rock.
David Lynch
#73. Cinema is a medium that can translate ideas.
David Lynch
#74. 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.
David Lynch
#75. I think part of the reason ideas haven't come in is that the world of cinema is changing so drastically, and in a weird way, feature films I think have become cheap. Everything is kind of throwaway. It's experienced and then forgotten.
David Lynch
#76. 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.
David Lynch
#77. Everybody's got creativity. Dive within to the ocean of infinite creativity.
David Lynch
#78. 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.
David Lynch
#79. 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.
David Lynch
#80. 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.
David Lynch
#81. I don't think it was pain that made [Vincent Van Gogh] great - I think his painting brought him whatever happiness he had.
David Lynch
#82. It's so freeing, it's beautiful in a way, to have a great failure, there's nowhere to go but up.
David Lynch
#83. 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.
David Lynch
#84. The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you're dead.
David Lynch
#85. I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable.
David Lynch
#86. I don't paint the town red. But when I do go out, people always want to touch my hair. It happens every time.
David Lynch
#87. 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.
David Lynch
#88. Some things we forget. But many things we remember on the mental screen, which is the biggest screen of all.
David Lynch
#89. 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.
David Lynch
#90. 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.
David Lynch
#91. My cow is not pretty, but it is pretty to me.
David Lynch
#92. 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.
David Lynch
#93. 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.
David Lynch
#94. 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.
David Lynch
#95. Every viewer is going to get a different thing. That's the thing about painting, photography, cinema.
David Lynch
#96. 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.
David Lynch
#97. 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.
David Lynch
#98. If you stay true to your ideas, film-making becomes an inside-out, honest kind of process.
David Lynch
#99. 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.
David Lynch
#100. 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.
David Lynch
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