David Lynch - Quotes

Being in darkness and confusion is interesting to me.
Lynch, David.

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

With TV being the modern peephole.
Lynch, David.

It's so powerful, where you place things and the relationships. But you don't work with any kind of intellectual thing. You just act and react. It's all intuition. It must obey rules, but these rules are not in any book. The basic rules of composition are a joke.
Lynch, David.

Once it becomes specific, it's no longer true to a lot of people, where if it's abstract there could be some truth to it for everyobdy.
Lynch, David.

If it stays abstract, if it's in an area where it feels truthful, and it hooks in the right way, and it thrills you as it moves to the next idea, and it seems to move and make some sort of intuitive sense.
Lynch, David.

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.
Lynch, David.

It doesn't do any good to say, 'This is what it means.' When you are spoon fed a film, people instantly know what it is. I like films that leave room to dream.
Lynch, David.

There's a beguiling and magnetic mood. There's so much darkness, and there's so much room to dream. They're mysteries and there are people in trouble, and uneasiness.
Lynch, David.

The beginning dictates the direction and you never know where you're going to go… the mood is what you're looking for, and somehow we always find it.
Lynch, David.

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.
Lynch, David and Gaby Wood (Interviewer). "David Lynch: Interview." in: The Guardian. March 1, 2009. (English).

... middle America as it's supposed to be. But on the cherry tree there's this pitch oozing out – some black, some yellow, and millions of red ants crawling all over it. I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath.
Lynch, David and Gaby Wood (Interviewer). "David Lynch: Interview." in: The Guardian. March 1, 2009. (English).

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.
Lynch, David and Gaby Wood (Interviewer). "David Lynch: Interview." in: The Guardian. March 1, 2009. (English).

Now there's the internet, you can distribute anything. The problem is, how do you get money for it? … It's gonna be very tough, coming up.
Lynch, David and Gaby Wood (Interviewer). "David Lynch: Interview." in: The Guardian. March 1, 2009. (English).

But what's important is that the actors have all they need to go forward with a character. Just like the way we all go through the world. We don't know all there to is know about the world. But we know our role, even though to a certain degree we don't know that. So it's partly to protect the whole thing, and not have anything leak out of it. Sometimes, when you say things out loud, some of the power leaks out of the thing.
Miller, Prarie. "Interview." in: NYRock. 2001. (English).

I enjoy catching the ideas. I enjoy translating them, and I enjoy sharing them.
Miller, Prarie. "Interview." in: NYRock. 2001. (English).

It's like eventually life seems to make sense, even though a lot of times it doesn't seem to, or little bits of it don't. And I think that with the human mind and intuition going to work, there's some feeling your way to know what every character is. The mind can almost not help itself, but go and find harmonics in the real world.
Miller, Prarie. "Interview." in: NYRock. 2001. (English).

I like to go into a theater, see those curtains open, and feel the lights going down. And go into a world and have an experience, knowing as little as I possibly can. And I think we owe it to an audience to let them experience a thing for themselves.
Miller, Prarie. "Interview." in: NYRock. 2001. (English).

I'm not within the Hollywood system. I've never made a studio picture. I live in Hollywood and I love Hollywood. But there is no such thing as the Hollywood system. It's always changing. And I'm surprised that I've been so fortunate, that I keep getting to make films. But I'm not part of the system.
Miller, Prarie. "Interview." in: NYRock. 2001. (English).

I love the light. I love the feeling in the air that I sometimes catch of old Hollywood. And I love the feeling in the air of L.A., of we can do anything. It's a creative feeling in L.A. It's not stifling to me, and it's not oppressive. It's a feeling of freedom. And maybe it comes from the light. I don't know; it's something in the air.
Miller, Prarie. "Interview." in: NYRock. 2001. (English).

That's the beauty of life, that you can sometimes find good food in a good coffee shop.
Miller, Prarie. "Interview." in: NYRock. 2001. (English).

Too little nudity breaks it, and too much breaks it. So I'm always looking for that balance point, and through action and reaction.
Miller, Prarie. "Interview." in: NYRock. 2001. (English).

It's not like you do something just to do something. You are true to the ideas. Each scene has a mood, a pace and a kind of feel that the ideas gave you. And so you try to stay true to that, and all the elements that go together to make it.
Miller, Prarie. "Interview." in: NYRock. 2001. (English).

It's just like the pencil and the paper. Everybody's got a pencil and paper, but how many great things are written. These are tools, but you have to focus on the ideas and tell the story. It's all about the story, and how the story is told.
Miller, Prarie. "Interview." in: NYRock. 2001. (English).

My cow went to Connecticut, and it went to New Jersey, I think. It went deeper underground. And I don't know who has it now.
Miller, Prarie. "Interview." in: NYRock. 2001. (English).

I was lured back because of a really strong desire to tell a continuing story in which you go deeper and deeper into a world and you get lost in that world. A pilot is open-ended, and, when it's over, you feel all these threads going out into the infinite which, to me, is a beautiful thing. It's like a body with no head.
Lynch, David. "Interview." in: MovieLine. August 1999. (English).

There's a bunch of people who want something different on TV. I was hopeful that I could make something the network would want.
Lynch, David. "Interview." in: MovieLine. August 1999. (English).

In the feature film world, I've had creative control since Blue Velvet. And in my mind it's not worth doing anything if you don't have that freedom. You have to do what you believe in. I'm not opposed to listening to somebody and defending decisions and taking a good note, but in the TV world, there's a real need for people to give notes. You could talk to 100 people and get 100 different reactions to something. And I don't want to do anything with people who aren't enthusiastic.
Lynch, David. "Interview." in: MovieLine. August 1999. (English).

... when something is over, it's over.
Lynch, David. "Interview." in: MovieLine. August 1999. (English).

(Q) Have you thought of moving to Europe where, one supposes, your TV pilots would be better received? (A)Yeah. I've thought about it quite a bit. But I love Los Angeles. (Q) What do you love about it? (A) The light ... and the feeling in the air... the feeling of optimism.
Lynch, David. "Interview." in: MovieLine. August 1999. (English).

I once considered psychoanalysis because I thought I might talk to somebody about these cycles of things like lunches. I asked the man, "Could meeting with you affect my creativity?" and he said, "I have to be honest, it could," and I said "Thank you very much, goodbye."
Lynch, David. "Marie Claire spends 24 hours with film director David Lynch." in: Marie Claire. February 1997. (English).

I meditate in the morning and in the evening, for half an hour each time. I don't know what my life would be without meditation and I never have missed one session anywhere. I've meditated every day for the past 23 years. It cleans the nervous system, which is the instrument of consciousness. Little by little, a person becomes a hair more aware of what's going on. The bad things that happen don't hit you so hard, and you're not overpowered by success. Success can be even more dangerous than failure.
Lynch, David. "Marie Claire spends 24 hours with film director David Lynch." in: Marie Claire. February 1997. (English).

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.
Lynch, David. "Marie Claire spends 24 hours with film director David Lynch." in: Marie Claire. February 1997. (English).

Even if it doesn´t work out, it´s been worth it.
Lynch, David. "Daring Dune." in: Rolling Stone. No. 436, December 6, 1984.

I have to reach a certain place to feel secure in my life.
Lynch, David. "Daring Dune." in: Rolling Stone. No. 436, December 6, 1984.

How I got together with Raffaella, when she is rational, so logical, the common sense is so strong, and I love mysteries and dreams and ambiguities and absurdities... It´s not a good compliment.
Lynch, David. "Daring Dune." in: Rolling Stone. No. 436, December 6, 1984.

You can go so huge with Al Whitlock, and it´s all painting. That shows you the magic of it. I learned so many things, the power and mood and scale, and I´ll be able to use it later on. If you´re writing a script and know what can be done, if you feed on that, you can build and build.
Lynch, David. "Daring Dune." in: Rolling Stone. No. 436, December 6, 1984.

I studied to be a painter, and, ah, I had ideas, but I never had to articulate them. They could remain in this fantastic area where they are just an abstraction and I could just plop them out and never have to speak a word. The hardest two things for me were to speak and to write down things on paper. That´s why each film I´ve done is a big step forward or me in forcing me to be more with words and people - you know, the opposite of a painter´s life.
Lynch, David. "Daring Dune." in: Rolling Stone. No. 436, December 6, 1984.

It´s a very dangerous thing, this movie business. Because no one will ever know what film could be when a filmmaker has to talk about it and convince people with words. Maybe somebody´s got them in his mind and can put them on film with the right sounds, but he can´t put them into words, you know, and sell the idea. And so those guys are fresh out of luck. It´s like Bergman in Hollywood - I don´t think it would have happened.
Lynch, David. "Daring Dune." in: Rolling Stone. No. 436, December 6, 1984.

Sores on skin, for instance, I think are really, incredibly beautiful. If I start seeing people suffering with sores on their skin, then it gets to me. But if you took a photograph of it and looked at it as a texture, it´s fantastic.
Lynch, David. "Daring Dune." in: Rolling Stone. No. 436, December 6, 1984.

I love the textures of a factory. I love smoke in the sky, and I love oil in the dirt. And I like wire, and I like broken glass, and I like sweat and pistols. I like a little bit of blood and saliva on concrete. I like cars and exhaust and, I don´t know, a million different things. Teeth.
Lynch, David. "Daring Dune." in: Rolling Stone. No. 436, December 6, 1984.