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

The ideas dictate everything.

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.

Eraserhead is my most spiritual movie. No one understands when I say that, but it is.

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.'

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.

I hear heroin is a very popular drug these days.