David Lynch

Director

1946-01-20

Quotes by 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.

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• I don't think it was pain that made [Vincent Van Gogh] great - I think his painting brought him whatever happiness he had.

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• 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.

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• 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.

  Read quote

• 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.

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• I don't think it was pain that made [Vincent Van Gogh] great - I think his painting brought him whatever happiness he had.

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

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• 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.

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• 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.

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

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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

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• If you stay true to your ideas, film-making becomes an inside-out, honest kind of process.

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• I'm not a musician, but I play music. So it's a strange thing.

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

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• 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.

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• The business side of film has goofed up so many things, but even that's changing. It happened to the music industry and now it's happening to the film studios. It's crazy what's going on. But artists should have control of their work; especially if, as I always say, you never turn down a good idea and never take a bad idea.

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• 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.

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