Best 227 quotes of David Lynch on MyQuotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A lot of painters listen to music, I think, while they paint. But I hate to do that. It's a horror. I can't really listen to the music. I'm not really concentrating on it, and I'm not really concentrating on the painting.

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.

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.

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.

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.

As a kid, I was always building things. My father had a shop in the house, and we built things - we were kind of a project family. I started out as a painter, and then painting led to cinema, and in cinema, you get to build so many things, or help build them.

As a teenager, I was really trying to have fun 24 hours a day. I didn't start thinking until I was 20 or 21. I was doing regular goof-ball stuff.

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.

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.

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.

Being in darkness and confusion is interesting to me.

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

Building a set is like building a place, but it's a temporary place, because sets usually get torn down. Kind of unfortunate.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Digital video is so beautiful. It's lightweight, modern, and it's only getting better. It's put film into the La Brea Tar Pits.

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.

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.

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.

Everybody's got creativity. Dive within to the ocean of infinite creativity.

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.

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

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.

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.

Every teacher of Transcendental Meditation is a hero.

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

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

Film can't just be a long line of bliss. There's something we all like about the human struggle.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I always say that intuition is the number one tool for an artist.

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

Ideas are floating like fish. Desire for an idea is like a bait on a hook. If you desire an idea, it pulls and it makes a kind of a bait. Ideas will come swimming up. And you don't know them until they enter the conscious mind. And then bingo! There it is! You know it instantly. And then more come in. If you go fishing for ideas, a lot of ideas will just pop in. And one of them will make you fall in love.