David Lynch Quotes

I hate slick and pretty things. I prefer mistakes and accidents. Which is why I like things like cuts and bruises - they're like little flowers. I've always said that if you have a name for something, like 'cut' or 'bruise,' people will automatically be disturbed by it. But when you see the same thing in nature, and you don't know what it is, it can be very beautiful.

~ David Lynch

I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me. People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it.

~ David Lynch

You can understand conflict, but you don'thave to live in it.

~ David Lynch

Intuition is seeing the solution.....its emotion and intellect going together.

~ David Lynch

I love going into another world, and I love mysteries. So I don't really like to know very much ahead of time. I like the feeling of dicovery.

~ David Lynch

New mysteries. New day. Fresh doughnuts.

~ David Lynch

It’s maybe impossible to escape (your own head), but I guess the secret is the prison cell just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and prettier and prettier and prettier.

~ David Lynch

People say my films are dark. But like lightness, darkness stems from a reflection of the world. The thing is, I get these ideas that I truly fall in love with. And a good movie idea is often like a girl you're in love with, but you know she's not the kind of girl you bring home to your parents, because they sometimes hold some dark and troubling things.

~ David Lynch

I quit smoking in December. I’m really depressed about it. I love smoking, I love fire, I miss lighting cigarettes. I like the whole thing about it, to me it turns into the artist’s life, and now people like Bloomberg have made animals out of smokers, and they think that if they stop smoking everyone will live forever.

~ David Lynch

Cinema is a language. It can say things—big, abstract things. And I love that about it. I’m not always good with words. Some people are poets and have a beautiful way of saying things with words. But cinema is its own language. And with it you can say so many things, because you’ve got time and sequences. You’ve got dialogue. You’ve got music. You’ve got sound effects. You have so many tools. And you can express a feeling and a thought that can’t be conveyed any other way. Its a magical medium. For me, it’s so beautiful to think about these pictures and sounds flowing together in time and in sequence, making something that can be done only through cinema. Its not just words or music-it’s a whole range of elements coming together and making something that didn’t exist before. It’s telling stories. It’s devising a world, an experience, that people cannot have unless they see that film. When I catch an idea for a film, I fall in love with the way cinema can express it. I like a story that holds abstractions, and that’s what cinema can do.

~ David Lynch

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.

~ David Lynch

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.

~ David Lynch

I don't remember my dreams too much. I hardly have ever gotten ideas from nighttime dreams. But I love daydreaming and dream logic and the way dreams go.

~ David Lynch

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.

~ David Lynch

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.

~ David Lynch

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!

~ David Lynch

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.

~ David Lynch

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.

~ David Lynch

More and more people are seeing the films on computers - lousy sound, lousy picture - and they think they've seen the film, but they really haven't.

~ David Lynch

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.

~ David Lynch

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

~ David Lynch

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.

~ David Lynch

The mantra that you're given in Transcendental Meditation you keep to yourself. The reason being, true happiness is not out there, true happiness lies within.

~ David Lynch

Life should be blissful, and blissful doesn't mean just a small happiness. It's huge. It is profound.

~ David Lynch

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.

~ David Lynch

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.

~ David Lynch

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.

~ David Lynch

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.

~ David Lynch

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.

~ David Lynch

Sugar does make people happy, but then you fall off the edge after a few minutes, so I've really pretty much cut it out of my diet. Except for cupcakes. I like those.

~ David Lynch

Sex is a doorway to something so powerful and mystical, but movies usually depict it in a completely flat way.

~ David Lynch

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.

~ David Lynch

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

~ David Lynch

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

~ David Lynch

A lot of artists think they want anger. But a real, strong, bitter anger occupies the mind, leaving no room for creativity.

~ David Lynch

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.

~ David Lynch