Quotes from David Lynch

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.

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

Don't make a film if it can't be the film you want to make. It's a joke, and a sick joke, and it'll kill you.

Making a film is a beautiful mystery. You go deep into the wood, and you don't want to come out of that wood.

It's a simple thing he [Frank Daniel] taught me. If you want to make a feature film, you get ideas for 70 scenes. Put them on 3-by-5 cards. As soon as you have 70, you have a feature film.

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.

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

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.

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.

I think that ideas exist outside of ourselves. I think somewhere, we're all connected off in some very abstract land. But somewhere between there and here ideas exist.

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.

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.

The world is as you are.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

Negativity is the enemy of creativity.

You don't need a special place to meditate. You can transcend anywhere in the world. The unified field is here, and there, and everywhere.

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!

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

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