David Lynch Quotes

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.

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.

I like cappuccino, actually. But even a bad cup of coffee is better than no coffee at all.

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.

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. Feeling correct is a feeling I think everyone knows.

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.

Some things we forget. But many things we remember on the mental screen, which is the biggest screen of all.

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

Cinema is a medium that can translate ideas.

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

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.

This is a donut. It is very sweet, and very good. But if you've never tasted a donut, you wouldn't really know how sweet and how good a donut is... meditation is like that. Transcendental Meditation gives an experience much sweeter than the sweetness of this donut.

Transcendental meditation is like a car, a vehicle that allows you to go within. It's a mental technique.

I don't like Thomas Edison. I'm a fan of Nicolai Tesla.

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.

Lately I feel films are more and more like music. Music deals with abstractions and, like film, it involves time. It has many different movements, it has much contrast. And through music you learn that, in order to get a particular beautiful feeling, you have to have started far back, arranging certain things in a certain way. You can't just cut to it.

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?

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 discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath.

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

When the going gets tough, everyone leaves.

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. Psychology destroys the mystery, this kind of magic quality. It can be reduced to certain neuroses or certain things, and since it is now named and defined, it's lost its mystery and the potential for a vast, infinite experience.

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

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.

Script is not finished until it's finished. There's many times, partway through a film, when an idea comes, and I say, "How beautiful this is. This thing was not complete and look what's happened, look what's come along." And it just came along at what might be called a strange time rather than a normal time.

You get all the puzzle parts together enough to say the puzzle is complete. It's a script. In the process of realizing that, new ideas can come, one way or another. Through a happy accident, they just come to you.

New mysteries. New day. Fresh doughnuts.

Nowadays, people shoot digitally and it's all in color, but you press a button and it all goes to black and white. But it's not lit for black and white. So, it's a tricky thing. If you're going do black and white, you better remember to separate things with light, because color ain't gonna be there.

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.

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.'

Sometimes I get an idea for cinema. And when you get an idea that you fall in love with, this is a glorious day.

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.

Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there's humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd.

Intuition is the key to everything, in painting, filmmaking, business - everything.

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.

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.

The world is as you are.

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.

Sleep is really important. You need to rest the physiology to be able to work weel and meditate well. When I don't get enough sleep, my meditations are duller. You may even dip into sleep at the beginning of your meditation, because you're settling down. But if you're well rested, you'll have a clearer deeper experience.

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

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.

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.

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

If a human being is filled with happiness and positivity, this is what they radiate out into the world. We each affect our environment and that collective consciousness. The more people who are diving within and transcending and are getting that happiness and positivity, the better the world will be.

Black has depth.. you can go into it.. And you start seeing what you're afraid of. You start seeing what you love, and it becomes like a dream.

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.

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.

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.