Top 55 David Lynch Quotes

Somehow, the French got this idea of the starving artist. Very romantic, except it’s not so romantic for the starving artist.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Transcendental meditation is an ancient mental technique that allows any human being to dive within, transcend and experience the source of everything. It’s such a blessing for the human being because that eternal field is a field of unbounded intelligence, creativity, happiness, love, energy and peace.

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.

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.

I love Christmas tree bulbs, and I started putting them in my paintings. You’ve got to plug this painting in, and it’s got a rig in the back, so that each one can be replaced if it burns out.

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.

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.

Stories hold conflict and contrast, highs and lows, life and death, and the human struggle and all kinds of things.

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.

The concept of absurdity is something I’m attracted to.

Most of Hollywood is about making money – and I love money, but I don’t make the films thinking about money.

The cinema is really built for the big screen and big sound, so that a person can go into another world and have an experience.

I have no problem getting financing. I have a problem catching ideas that I fall in love with for the next feature.

I think that commercials can really ruin a song. You know that the person sold the song for a good deal of money, and that was the tradeoff. But, music and picture can marry in a beautiful way, and the reverse also.

This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top.

What I really like is to be at home, working.

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.

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.

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.

There are only 24 hours in a day, and my top priority is working on my films, but I love short film experiments.

I didn’t watch much TV as a kid and I don’ t watch it now. I don’ t find anything beautiful or unique to the medium, and the only thing you can do on TV that you can’t do in film is make a continuing story – which is so cool!

See, a painting is much cheaper than making a film. And photography is, you know, way cheap. So if I get an idea for a film, there are many ways to get it together and go realise that film. There’s really nothing to be afraid of.

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.

Cinema is a medium that can translate ideas.

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

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 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.

I was raised Presbyterian, but I’m not really going to church. I think the experience in meditation is pretty much where it’s at for me.

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

I’ve said many, many, many unkind things about Philadelphia, and I meant every one.

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

Television provides the opportunity for an ongoing story – the opportunity to meld the cast and the characters and a world, and to spend more time there.

The greatest thing my father left me was a love for cutting wood – my love for sawing, especially pine wood.

Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be allowed to be, too.

If you stay true to your ideas, film-making becomes an inside-out, honest kind of process.

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.

Everyone is on the internet but they’re not all talking with each other. There are groups upon groups out there, but they don’t talk to one another. So while the internet brings everyone into a shared space, it does not necessarily bring them together.

Meditation is to dive all the way within, beyond thought, to the source of thought and pure consciousness. It enlarges the container, every time you transcend. When you come out, you come out refreshed, filled with energy and enthusiasm for life.

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

I don’t think that people accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it.

Music deals with time and timing. It’s so magical, but when you get into it, every little sound and every little space between the sounds, it’s critical, so critical. And if it’s not there, it not only feels wrong, but it ruins things.

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.

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.

Negativity is the enemy of creativity.

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.

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.

A film – especially when it’s a personal film – is going to hit somebody or it’s not. There’s nothing you can do about it.

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.

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.

In Hollywood, more often than not, they’re making more kind of traditional films, stories that are understood by people. And the entire story is understood. And they become worried if even for one small moment something happens that is not understood by everyone.