Top 250 David Lynch Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “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.”

— David Lynch

152. “I believe in creative control. No matter what anyone makes, they should have control over it.”

— David Lynch

153. “Surface cures are not going to get rid of the torment that’s inside.”

— David Lynch

154. “I don’t like Thomas Edison. I’m a fan of Nicolai Tesla.”

— David Lynch

155. “The interesting thing that happens for many people when they first start meditating is that they’ll be doing it for a few months, and they will begin to change, but the experience is so subtle that they’re not even aware of it.”

— David Lynch

156. “I love the quality, feel and history of film. I love the pictures of the giant cameras and the way it was.”

— David Lynch

157. “My rule of thumb is, what Siskel and Ebert like, I don’t, and vice versa.”

— David Lynch

158. “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.”

— David Lynch

159. “We want to generate the electricity of peace through music, and it’s a thrill to know that the super-creative, enthusiastic musicians of our world are with us to achieve this goal.”

— David Lynch

160. “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

161. “I don’t think anybody really loves the sound of their own voice, but the tweakability is huge.”

— David Lynch

162. “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

163. “People think in Hollywood there’s a family, where everybody gets together talks about stuff and we all know each other, and it’s just not that way at all to me.”

— David Lynch

164. “I’m not really into vinyl. There’s something about that raw, birth of rock and roll feel that makes me crazy.”

— David Lynch

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

— David Lynch

166. “What you’re reading here is basically a person having a conversation with his own biography.”

— David Lynch

167. “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.”

— David Lynch

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

— David Lynch

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

— David Lynch

170. “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.”

— David Lynch

171. “Anger, stress, tension, depression, sorrow, hate, fear – these things start to retreat. And for a filmmaker, having this negativity lift away is money in the bank. When you’re suffering you can’t create.”

— David Lynch

172. “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

173. “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.”

— David Lynch

174. “It’s so freeing, it’s beautiful in a way, to have a great failure, there’s nowhere to go but up.”

— David Lynch

175. “I love seeing people come out of darkness.”

— David Lynch

176. “He whose happiness is within, whose contentment is within, whose light is all within, that yogi, being one with Brahman, attains eternal freedom in divine consciousness. BHAGAVAD-GITA.”

— David Lynch

177. “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.”

— David Lynch

178. “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

179. “When you get an idea and you fall in love with it there’s not a whole lot of choice. You’re going down a street and you meet this girl and you know it doesn’t have to make any sense. Bingo! You’re in love.”

— David Lynch

180. “The human being is like a light bulb. If a human being is super stressed, depressed and filled with negativity, this is what that human being radiates out into the world.”

— David Lynch

181. “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.”

— David Lynch

182. “I like darkness and confusion and absurdity, but I like to know that there could be a little door that you could go out into a safe life area of happiness.”

— David Lynch

183. “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.”

— David Lynch

184. “I love industry. Pipes. I love fluid and smoke. I love man-made things. I like to see people hard at work, and I like to see sludge and man-made waste.”

— David Lynch

185. “The beautiful thing is that when you catch one fish that you love, even if it’s a little fish – a fragment of an idea – that fish will draw in other fish, and they’ll hook onto it. Then you’re on your way. Soon there are more and more and more fragments, and the whole thing emerges. But it starts with desire.”

— David Lynch

186. “I like making films because I like to go into another world. I like to get lost into another world.”

— David Lynch

187. “I love the French. They’re the biggest film buffs and protectors of cinema in the world. They really look out for the filmmaker and the rights of the filmmaker, and they believe in final cut.”

— David Lynch

188. “Because you make a world that didn’t exist before, and you can go into that world deeper and deeper. It’s unbounded out there. One film takes you into one area, another film takes you into another area. There could be trillions, zillions of worlds that exist in the big space.”

— David Lynch

189. “There’s always fear of the unknown where there’s mystery.”

— David Lynch

190. “So much of what happened to me is good fortune. But I would say: Try to get a job that gives you some time; get your sleep and a little bit of food; and work as much as you can. There’s so much enjoyment in doing what you love. Maybe this will open doors, and you’ll find a way to do what you love.”

— David Lynch

191. “Stay true to yourself. Let your voice ring out, and don’t let anybody fiddle with it. Never turn down a good idea, but never take a bad idea. And meditate.”

— David Lynch

192. “I love super crispy, almost burned, snapping-crispy bacon.”

— David Lynch

193. “An artist makes a painting, and nobody bugs him or her about it. It’s just you and your painting. To me, that’s the way it should be with film as well.”

— David Lynch

194. “I love music, of course, and many, many, many genres. There are hardly any songs I would say that I hate. There’s a couple, and I don’t even know exactly why I don’t like them.”

— David Lynch

195. “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

196. “But if you know that you’ve got to be somewhere in half an hour, there’s no way you can achieve that. So the art life means a freedom to have time for the good things to happen. There’s not always a lot of time for other things.”

— David Lynch

197. “Many of the things I see in the world seem very beautiful, but it’s still hard for me to figure out how things can be the way they are, and I guess that’s one of the reasons why my movies tend to be open to many different interpretations.”

— David Lynch

198. “Someday, hopefully very soon, ‘diving within’ as a preparation for learning and as a tool for developing the creative potential of the mind will be a standard part of every school’s curriculum.”

— David Lynch

199. “I don’t necessarily love rotting bodies, but there’s a texture to a rotting body that is unbelievable. Have you ever seen a little rotted animal? I love looking at those things, just as much as I like to look at a close-up of some tree bark, or a small bug, or a cup of coffee, or a piece of pie. You get in close and the textures are wonderful.”

— David Lynch

200. “I like to feel like you can bite my paintings. Not to eat them, to hurt them. I like to feel like I’m painting with my teeth.”

— David Lynch