Quotes from David Lynch

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

I don't necessarily love rotting bodies, but there's a texture to a rotting body that is un-believable. 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.

And it should be fun. In work and in life, we're all supposed to get along. We're supposed to have so much fun, like puppy dogs with our tails wagging. It's supposed to be great living; it's supposed to be fantastic.

Sitting in front of a fire is mesmerizing. It's magical. I feel the same way about electricity. And smoke. And flickering lights.

You can tell all the stories you want, but you still haven't gotten across what the experience was like. It's like telling somebody a dream. It doesn't give them the dream. So

Madison is a very enlightened, idealized Midwestern place, and the people there are friendly.

Closure. I keep hearing that word. ... As soon as a show has a sense of closure, it gives you an excuse to forget you've seen the damn thing.

My childhood was elegant homes, tree-lined streets, the milkman, building backyard forts, droning airplanes, blue skies, picket fences, green grass, cherry trees. 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.

I went to a psychiatrist once. I was doing something that had become a pattern in my life, and I thought, Well, I should go talk to a psychiatrist. When I got into the room, l asked him, Do you think that this process could, in any way, damage my creativity? And he said, Well, David, I have to be honest: it could. And I shook his hand and left.

Most of filmmaking is common sense. If you stay on your toes and think about how to do a thing, it's right there.

When I was young, I did a lot of things with pine. But then, I started falling in love with Douglas fir, vertical-grain Douglas fir.

Lynch began classes on September 25th, joining the members of the AFI's first graduating class, which included filmmakers Terrence Malick, Caleb Deschanel, Tim Hunter, and Paul Schrader.

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.

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.

Every viewer is going to get a different thing. That's the thing about painting, photography, cinema.

There's always fear of the unknown where there's mystery.