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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

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Absurdity Is What I

David Lynch

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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.

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I Just Hope That I Get A Chance To Keep Making Pictures In The Atmosphere Of Freedom To Make Mistakes, And To Find Those Magical Things. Then I Don't Care What Else Happens.

It's Important That A Film Is Loud And I Hope Many People Agree. You Should Be Inside Of A Film When You Go Into A Theater. It Should Surround You, Envelope You, So You Can Live Inside A Dream.

Man Is Evolving...but It's Difficult To See His Progress With A Western Perception Of Time. The Hindus Think Of Time In Much Larger Segments. They Watch The Hour Hand Of The Clock While We In The West Are Preoccupied With The Second Hand.

We Only Dream Of Images We Already Have Inside Of Us.

I Like Cappuccino, Actually. But Even A Bad Cup Of Coffee Is Better Than No Coffee At All.

Some Things We Forget. But Many Things We Remember On The Mental Screen, Which Is The Biggest Screen Of All.

Making A Film Is A Beautiful Mystery. You Go Deep Into The Wood, And You Don't Want To Come Out Of That Wood.

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.

A Lot Of Musicians Like To Do The Bass And The Drums With Analog And Get That Tape Distortion That's Really Beautiful. As Far As The Digital World Goes - It's All Going To End Up There Anyway, But When You Hear Vinyl It Does A Different Thing To You. Nowadays, People Do Cds And Then Vinyl So It's Everything Goes; It's A Such A Beautiful World.

I've Seen So Many Cases Where Lives Have Been Transformed For The Good And Heard So Many Stories About This. The Technique Of Transcendental Meditation Really Works For The Human Being.

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.

I'm Not A Political Person. I Don't Understand Politics, I Don't Understand The Concept Of Two Sides And I Think That Probably There's Good On Both Sides, Bad On Both Sides, And There's A Middle Ground, But It Never Seems To Come To The Middle Ground And It's Very Frustrating Watching It And Seemingly We're Not Moving Forward.

The Nervous System Functions In A Fourth, Unique Way, As Different As Dreaming Is From Sleeping As Sleeping Is From Waking. When You Transcend, It's The Only Experience That Lights The Full Brain On An Eeg Machine. It's The Only Experience That Utilizes The Full Brain.

Negativity Is The Enemy Of Creativity. For Instance If You're Filled With Depression, You Can Hardly Even Get Out Of Bed, Let Alone Feel Like Creating Something. If You Are Filled With Bitter, Selfish Anger, This Occupies The Mind And Leaves Little Room For Creative Ideas.

There Is An Ocean Of Pure Vibrant Consciousness Inside Each One Of Us.

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.

In The World There's A Thing Called Collective Consciousness. All Of Us Billions Of Human Beings Together Create That Collective Consciousness. With All The Problems In Our World, You Can See That The Collective Consciousness Is Not So High.

Surface Cures Are Not Going To Get Rid Of The Torment That's Inside.

I Just Love Musicians. They're Not All Super-happy All The Time, But When They're Playing They're Happy, And It's Such A Beautiful Thing.

Lately I Feel Films Are More And More Like Music. Music Deals With Abstractions And, Like Film, It Involves Time. It Has Many Different Movements, It Has Much Contrast. And Through Music You Learn That, In Order To Get A Particular Beautiful Feeling, You Have To Have Started Far Back, Arranging Certain Things In A Certain Way. You Can't Just Cut To It.

You Don't Dive For Specific Solutions; You Dive To Enliven That Ocean Of Consciousness. Then Your Intuition Grows And You Have A Way Of Solving Those Problems-knowing When It's Not Quite Right And Knowing A Way To Make It Feel Correct For You. That Capacity Grows And Things Go Much More Smoothly.

If You Have A Golf-ball-sized Consciousness, When You Read A Book, You'll Have A Golf-ball-sized Understanding; When You Look Out A Window, A Golf-ball-sized Awareness, When You Wake Up In The Morning, A Golf-ball-sized Wakefulness; And As You Go About Your Day, A Golf-ball-sized Inner Happiness. But If You Can Expand That Consciousness, Make It Grow, Then When You Read About That Book, You'll Have More Understanding; When You Look Out, More Awareness; When You Wake Up, More Wakefulness; As You Go About Your Day, More Inner Happiness.

During The Course Of A Day, Some Dark Feeling Comes, Maybe Some Sadness Comes, Some Thrill, Some Great Happiness, Some Strange Humor. Cinema Can Embrace All That In One Story, Just As The Story Of Life.

Dark Things Have Always Existed But They Used To Be In A Proper Balance With Good When Life Was Slower.

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. That's Why I Love Coffee Shops And Public Places - I Mean, They're All Out There.

The Great Coming To Age Of Cable Is Really A Beautiful Thing. No Commercials. It's Like A Small Theater. It's A Cinema On A Tv Screen.

Beautiful Things

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.

If The People In A Relationship Were Able To Get Rid Of This Torment Within And Replace It With Happiness, Love, And A Sense Of Well-being, They Would Never Think To Hurt Another Human Being. They Would Be Filled With An Understanding Of Others And An Appreciation Of Others And Have An Ability To Reconcile Differences Without Any Violence Whatsoever, To Reconcile Differences In A Very Loving Way, A Very Happy Way.

I Was Creative Before I Started Meditating, But I Had, Looking Back, A Weakness. I Wasn't Self-assured. I Had A Little Bit Of Melancholy. I Had A Lot Of Anger For My Situations In Life, And I Would Take This Out On My First Wife.

Situations In Life

Achievement Is Its Own Reward

Transcendental Meditation Is A Mental Technique, So You Travel To This Field Through Subtler Levels Of Mind, And Then Subtler Levels Of Intellect, And Then, At The Border Of Intellect, You Transcend And Experience It.

Cinema Is A Medium That Can Translate Ideas.

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.

Yes, Philadelphia Is Horrible, But In A Very Interesting Way. There Were Places There That Had Been Allowed To Decay, Where There Was So Much Fear And Crime That Just For A Moment There Was An Opening To Another World. It Was Fear, But It Was So Strong, And So Magical, Like A Magnet, That Your Imagination Was Always Sparking In Philadelphiai Just Have To Think Of Philadelphia Now, And I Get Ideas, I Hear The Wind, And I'm Off Into The Darkness Somewhere.

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.

To Me, Jazz Is The Closest Thing To Insanity That There Is In Music.

Somewhere In Talking And Rehearsing, There Is A Magical Moment Where Actors Catch A Current, They're On The Right Road. If They Really Catch It, Then Whatever They Do From Then On Is Correct And It All Comes Out Of Them From That Point On.

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.

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.

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. Feeling Correct Is A Feeling I Think Everyone Knows.

Script Is Not Finished Until It's Finished. There's Many Times, Partway Through A Film, When An Idea Comes, And I Say, "how Beautiful This Is. This Thing Was Not Complete And Look What's Happened, Look What's Come Along." And It Just Came Along At What Might Be Called A Strange Time Rather Than A Normal Time.

They Say The Full Potential Of The Human Being Is Called Enlightenment, Which Is Infinite Consciousness, Infinite Happiness, Zero Negativity, Zero Dying, Complete Freedom, Total Fulfillment, And Being At One With Everything. You Can Say It's God Realization, Or You Can Say You Sit At The Feet Of The Lord As Master Of All You Survey. You Could Say It's Totality, Total Knowledge, And That You Are That Totality. This Is Every Human Being's Birthright: To One Day Enjoy Supreme Enlightenment, Unity. It's Like The Big Graduation.

Transcendental Meditation Is Not A Religion, It's Not Against Any Religion, It's For Human Beings, No Matter What Color, What Religion, What Walk Of Life. If You're A Human Being, It Will Work For You. And You Will Be Very Glad You Found This Technique And Took Advantage Of It.

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.

Most Of Hollywood Is About Making Money - And I Love Money, But I Don't Make The Films Thinking About Money.

Ideas Are Like Fish. If You Want To Catch Little Fish, You Can Stay In The Shallow Water. But If You Want To Catch The Big Fish, You’ve Got To Go Deeper. Down Deep, The Fish Are More Powerful And More Pure.they’re Huge And Abstract. And They’re Very Beautiful.

Every Time I Hear Sounds, I See Pictures. Then, I Start Getting Ideas. It Just Drives Me Crazy

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.

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.

Francis Bacon Is One Of My Giant Inspirations. I Just Love Him To Pieces.

Domestic Violence And Violence Against Women In General Seems To Be A Big Problem Everywhere In The World. It Seems To Me This Problem Comes From Stress, Pent Up Anger, Frustration, And All Kinds Of Negativity Within Human Beings.

Intuition Is Knowingness, And This Field Of Unbounded Knowing, Of Knowingness, Is Within Every Human Being. You Start Tapping Into That And It Becomes An Ocean Of Solutions.

I'm Not Comfortable With Words. I Love Images ,and I Love Sounds, And I Love Feelings. I Like The Idea Of Intuition. I Think A Lot Of Things In Life Are Understood That Way. But You Internalize These Things; They Don't Really Pop Out. Certain Things Are Built Inside - Little Areas Of Understanding. I Feel That I Live In Darkness And Confusion, And I'm Trying, Like We All Are, To Make Some Sort Of Sense Of It.

The Side Effect Of Expanding Consciousness Is That Negativity Starts To Evaporate; It Goes Away Like Darkness When You Turn On A Light. Many Students Have So Much Torment, Stress, Depression, Sorrow And Hate In Them These Days, But Then They Get This Technique And The Negativity Starts To Go Away. They Start To Feel Good Because The Torment Is Leaving. Their Health Gets Better And They Get Happier, Their Comprehension And Their Ability To Focus Grow, Their Grades Go Up And A Joy For Life Grows; All Of Which Comes From Within.

All We Really Need Is This Technique Of Transcendental Meditation, Which Allows Any Human Being To Easily And Effortlessly Transcend. When You Get This Technique Of Transcendental Meditation, Stay Regular In Your Meditation Twice A Day And You Will Begin To Rapidly Unfold Your Full Potential As A Human Being And See Life Get Better And Better And Better.

I Like Things To Be Orderly.

Transcendental Meditation Is Like A Car, A Vehicle That Allows You To Go Within. It's A Mental Technique. You're Given A Mantra - The Mantra That Maharishi Gives Is Very Specific, And You Start To Dive Into Subtler Levels Of Mind, Subtler Levels Of Intellect. You Transcend The Whole Show, Into Pure Bliss Consciousness. From Your First Meditation, You Say, "whoa!" It's A Unique Experience, But A Familiar Experience.

Everybody's Got Creativity. Dive Within To The Ocean Of Infinite Creativity.

I Love The Quality, Feel And History Of Film. I Love The Pictures Of The Giant Cameras And The Way It Was.

Building A Set Is Like Building A Place, But It's A Temporary Place, Because Sets Usually Get Torn Down. Kind Of Unfortunate.

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.

Enthusiasm For Life

See, A Painting Is Much Cheaper Than Making A Film. And Photography Is, You Know, Way Cheap. So If I Get An Idea For A Film, There Are Many Ways To Get It Together And Go Realise That Film. There's Really Nothing To Be Afraid Of.

Forget Being The Best Of Anything. That's The Fruit Of The Action, And You Do The Work -they Say- For The Doing, Not The Fruit. You Can Never Really Know How It's Gonna Turn Out In The World But You Know If You Enjoy Doing It. And Ideas Start Flowing And You Start Getting, You Know, Excited About Stuff. Then You're Having A Great Time In The Doing And That's What It's All About. If You Don't Enjoy The Doing, Then Do Something Else.

I Have Smoked Marijuana, But I No Longer Do. I Went To Art School In The 1960s So You Can Imagine What Was Going On. Yet My Friends Were The Ones Who Said, "no, No, No, David, Don't Take Those Drugs." I Was Pretty Lucky.

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 Like Making Films Because I Like To Go Into Another World. I Like To Get Lost Into Another World.

Through The Darkness Of Future Past, The Magician Longs To See, One Chance Out Between Two Worlds, Fire Walk With Me!

With Each Experience Of The Unbounded Ocean Of Consciousness, You Infuse It Into Your Life And Therefore Expand Whatever Consciousness You Had To Begin With.

We're All Like Detectives. We Want To Figure Things Out. Life, You Know, We Want To Figure Out Life, And We Want To Figure Out What's Going On, So It's Beautiful. It's Beautiful That People Are Thinking.

There Is This Unbounded, Infinite, Eternal, Level, Ocean, Within Every Human Being. Inner Happiness Comes With Consciousness, Bliss, Intelligence Comes With It. Creativity, Love. Human Beings Have A Potential And It Has Names Like Enlightenment Or Fulfilment, Or Liberation. True Happiness Is Not Out There, True Happiness Lies Within. They Say Beauty Is Only Skin Deep But It's This Stuff Coming From The Inside, Absolute Vibrant Consciousness, Absolute Bliss

The Day You Catch An Idea You Fall In Love With, Even A Small One, Is A Beautiful Day.

Falling In Love

I Don't Think It Was Pain That Made [vincent Van Gogh] Great - I Think His Painting Brought Him Whatever Happiness He Had.

Life Is Very, Very Complicated, And So Films Should Be Allowed To Be, Too.

Stories Have Tangents; They Open Up And Become Different Things. You Can Still Have A Structure, But You Should Leave Room To Dream. If You Stay True To Your Ideas, Filmmaking Becomes An Inside-out, Honest Kind Of Process. And If It's An Honest Thing For You, There's A Chance That People Will Feel That, Even If It's Abstract.

I Believe In Creative Control. No Matter What Anyone Makes, They Should Have Control Over It.

I Supported Myself By Delivering The 'wall Street Journal' And Doing Odd Jobs. I Love Plumbing And Carpentry.

The More Unknowable The Mystery, The More Beautiful It Is.

I Have A Profound Admiration For Fellini. I Met Him Lately And He's Just Fantastic. I Feel Very Close To Him Even Though He's Very Italian. But His Films Could Have Been Made In Every Country. When I Say, I Feel Close To Him, Then Also Because We're Both Born On January 20th.

I Like People Who, You Know, As You Go Along In Life, You Know, A Thing Happens, And People Become A Seeker. They Look For Something To Give Them The Path To Their Full Potential. I Like Them To Know About Transcendental Mediation, But They've Got To Make Up Their Own Mind To Take It And Use It.

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.

I Just Like Going Into Strange Worlds.

I Have Been 'diving Within' Through The Transcendental Meditation Technique For Over 30 Years. It Has Changed My Life, My World. I Am Not Alone. Millions Of Other People Of All Ages, Religions, And Walks Of Life Practice The Technique And Enjoy Incredible Benefits.

Been Trying The Soapy Water And Instant Coffee Method. Works Somewhat, But Boy It Tastes Terrible. I Don't Know How You Guys Can Stand It. I'm Going Back To Milk And Espresso For My Cappas.

If You Keep Your Eye On The Doughnut And Do Your Work, That's All You Can Control. You Can't Control Any Of What's Out There, Outside Yourself.

Being In Darkness And Confusion Is Interesting To Me. But Behind It You Can Rise Out Of That And See Things The Way The Really Are.

Absurdity Is What I Like Most In Life.

Absurdity Of Life

In Today’s World Of Fear And Uncertainty, Every Child Should Have One Class Period A Day To Dive Within Himself And Experience The Field Of Silence - Bliss - The Enormous Reservoir Of Energy And Intelligence That Is Deep Within All Of Us. This Is The Way To Save The Coming Generation.

I Was Raised Presbyterian, But I'm Not Really Going To Church. I Think The Experience In Meditation Is Pretty Much Where It's At For Me.

I Don't Think Anybody Really Loves The Sound Of Their Own Voice, But The Tweakability Is Huge.

Every Single Person Has Within An Ocean Of Pure Vibrant Consciousness. Every Single Human Being Can Experience That - Infinite Intelligence, Infinite Creativity, Infinite Happiness, Infinite Energy, Infinite Dynamic Peace.

I Like Things That Go Into Hidden, Mysterious Places, Places I Want To Explore That Are Very Disturbing. In That Disturbing Thing, There Is Sometimes Tremendous Poetry And Truth.

I Know Club Music Has To Be Infectious And It's Got To Make You Move.

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.

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.

Many Things Happen That We Don't Know The Significance Of Until A Little Bit Later.

Sometimes I Get Ideas For Lyrics In Anyplace, But I Work A Lot In The Studio. So I Collect Little Bits Of Lyrics. I Go Through The Box Of Lyrics I Have And See If Something Fits.

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.

Being In Darkness And Confusion Is Interesting To Me. But Behind It You Can Rise Out Of That And See Things The Way The Really Are. That There Is Some Sort Of Truth To The Whole Thing, If You Could Just Get To That Point Where You Could See It, And Live It, And Feel It. I Think It Is A Long, Long, Way Off. In The Meantime There’s Suffering And Darkness And Confusion And Absurdities, And It’s People Kind Of Going In Circles. It’s Fantastic. It’s Like A Strange Carnival: It’s A Lot Of Fun, But It’s A Lot Of Pain.

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.

It's Better Not To Know So Much About What Things Mean Or How They Might Be Interpreted Or You'll Be Too Afraid To Let Things Keep Happening. Psychology Destroys The Mystery, This Kind Of Magic Quality. It Can Be Reduced To Certain Neuroses Or Certain Things, And Since It Is Now Named And Defined, It's Lost Its Mystery And The Potential For A Vast, Infinite Experience.

Some People Grew Up In The '70s, Powerful, Beautiful Memories Of The '70s Which To Me Is One Of The Worst Decades. It Has Something To Do With That. Has Something To With The Birth Of Rock 'n' Roll, And Something To Do With Those American Cars. An Incredible Design. There Was So Much Optimism At That Time And It Must Leak Into The Process.

I'm Lost In A Transition. The Old Is Dead, And I Don't Know What The New Is. The Only Way To Find The New Is To Start Different Things And See If There's Something That Can Come Out Of Experimentation. It's Somewhat Unsettling, But It's A Hopeful Thing In A Way. I've Been Here Before, Lots Of Times.

A Lot Of Painters Listen To Music, I Think, While They Paint. But I Hate To Do That. It's A Horror. I Can't Really Listen To The Music. I'm Not Really Concentrating On It, And I'm Not Really Concentrating On The Painting.

A Lot Of Music Doesn't Do One Thing Or Another. It Just Doesn't Do Anything. Then There Are Those Pieces Of Music That Thrill Your Soul. It's Such A Wide Range, And It's Really Interesting That We All Love Different Things.

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.

Two Half Hitches Around The Horn Will Hold The Devil As Sure As You're Born.

I Always Say That Intuition Is The Number One Tool For An Artist.

I Love Super Crispy, Almost Burned, Snapping-crispy Bacon.

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.

There Is An Ocean Of Creativity Within Every Human Being.

The Only Thing That Disturbs Me Is That Many Psychopaths Say They Had A Very Happy Childhood.

We All Have At Least Two Sides. The World We Live In Is A World Of Opposites. And The Trick Is To Reconcile Those Opposing Things. I've Always Liked Both Sides. In Order To Appreciate One You Have To Know The Other. The More Darkness You Can Gather Up, The More Light You Can See Too.

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.

Falling In Love

It's Important To Listen To Lots Of Different Genres Because You Never Know When Something Will Get Born Out Of It.

True Happiness Is Not Out There. True Happiness Lies Within.

Transcendental Meditation

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.

To Me, A Story Can Be Both Concrete And Abstract, Or A Concrete Story Can Hold Abstractions. And Abstractions Are Things That Really Can't Be Said So Well With Words.

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.

As A Kid, I Was Always Building Things. My Father Had A Shop In The House, And We Built Things - We Were Kind Of A Project Family. I Started Out As A Painter, And Then Painting Led To Cinema, And In Cinema, You Get To Build So Many Things, Or Help Build Them.

The Artist Does Not Have To Suffer To Show Suffering.

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.

It's So Freeing, It's Beautiful In A Way, To Have A Great Failure, There's Nowhere To Go But Up.

New Mysteries. New Day. Fresh Doughnuts.

They Say That Negative Things Like Stress, Anxiety, Tension, Sorrow, And Depression "squeeze The Tube" So Ideas Don't Flow Through It. But If You Get Rid Of That Negativity, Which Goes Away Naturally When You Transcend Every Day, These Ideas Are More Freely Flowing, And You Get Happy In The Doing. You Get Fresh And Inspiring Ideas, And A Bigger Picture Starts To Emerge Of The World And Life. It's Very Good For The Artist, Businessman, Fisherman, And Any Kind Of Person Really.

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.

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.

The Greatest Thing My Father Left Me Was A Love For Cutting Wood - My Love For Sawing, Especially Pine Wood.

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.

There's Always Fear Of The Unknown Where There's Mystery.

Fear Of The Unknown

I Don't Know Why People Expect Art To Make Sense. They Accept The Fact That Life Doesn't Make Sense.

When You Sleep, You Don`t Control Your Dream. I Like To Dive Into A Dream World That I've Made, A World I Chose And That I Have Complete Control Over.

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.

The Concept Of Absurdity Is Something I'm Attracted To.

But If You Can Expand That Consciousness, Make It Grow, Then When You Read About That Book, You'll Have More Understanding; When You Look Out, More Awareness; When You Wake Up, More Wakefulness; As You Go About Your Day, More Inner Happiness.

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.

I Started Transcendental Meditation In 1973 And Have Not Missed A Single Meditation Ever Since. Twice A Day, Every Day. It Has Given Me Effortless Access To Unlimited Reserves Of Energy, Creativity And Happiness Deep Within.

Life Is Filled With Abstractions, And The Only Way To Make Heads Or Tails Of It Is Going Through Intuition.

Death In My Mind Isn't A Finality. There's A Continuum: It's Like At Night, You Go To Sleep And In The Daytime You Wake Up, Or Whenever You Wake Up, And It's A New Day.

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.

As Collective Consciousness Goes Higher And Higher, All The Differences In The World Will Be Appreciated More And More. A Definition Of Peace Is Unity In The Midst Of Diversity. Or You Could Say Happiness, Love, And Peace In The Midst Of All Diversity. All The Differences Would Be Appreciated Fully In The Light Of This Peace.

When You Do Something That Works You Have A Happiness, But I Don't Know If It's A Feeling Of Power. Power Is A Frightening Thing And That's Not What I'm Interested In. I Want To Do Certain Things And Make Them Right In My Mind And That's It.

When You Get An Idea, So Many Things Come In That One Moment. You Could Write The Sound Of That Idea, Or The Sound Of The Room It's In. You Could Write The Clothes The Character Is Wearing, What They're Saying, How They Move, What They Look Like. Instead Of Making Up, You're Actually Catching An Idea, For A Story, Characters, Place, And Mood - All The Stuff That Comes.

I Learned That Just Beneath The Surface There's Another World, And Still Different Worlds As You Dig Deeper. I Knew It As A Kid, But I Couldn't Find The Proof. It Was Just A Kind Of Feeling. There Is Goodness In Blue Skies And Flowers, But Another Force - A Wild Pain And Decay - Also Accompanies Everything.

Stories Always Have Held Conflicts And Contrasts, Highs And Lows, Life And Death Situations. And There Can Be Much Suffering In Stories, But Now We Say The Artist Doesn’t Have To Suffer To Show Suffering. You Just Have To Understand The Human Condition, Understand The Suffering.

My Mother Refused To Give Me Coloring Books As A Child. She Probably Saved Me, Because When You Think About It, What A Coloring Book Does Is Completely Kill Creativity.

One Change Of Attitude Would Change Everything. If Everyone Realized That It Could Be A Beautiful World And Said, 'let's Not Do These Things Anymore - Let's Have Fun.'

Intuition Is The Key To Everything, In Painting, Filmmaking, Business - Everything.

Joining Together

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.

Film Noir Has A Mood That Everyone Can Feel. It’s People In Trouble, At Night, With A Little Bit Of Wind And The Right Kind Of Music. It’s A Beautiful Thing.

Speaking In Front Of A Large Crowd Is Not Pleasant. Once It Gets Rolling, It's Okay. But Beforehand, It's Murder.

It’s Better Not To Know So Much About What Things Mean Or How They Might Be Interpreted Or You’ll Be Too Afraid To Let Things Keep Happening.

Float With Me In The World Of Ether.

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.

I'm Not Really Into Vinyl. There's Something About That Raw, Birth Of Rock And Roll Feel That Makes Me Crazy.

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'm Not A Musician, But I Play Music. So It's A Strange Thing.

If A Human Being Is Filled With Happiness And Positivity, This Is What They Radiate Out Into The World. We Each Affect Our Environment And That Collective Consciousness. The More People Who Are Diving Within And Transcending And Are Getting That Happiness And Positivity, The Better The World Will Be.

Well, I've Been Blessed With Good Hair, Or At Least Some People Think It Is. It Is The Way It Is, Sort Of Does What It Wants To. So, Yeah, I Guess It Is [a Metaphor For Your Views On Art And Life].

I've Always Loved The Electric Guitar: To Hold It And Work It And Hear What It Does Is Unreal.

I Didn't Know Anything About Film When I First Started - I Was A Painter - But I [always] Felt That Sound Was Just As Important As The Picture. The Sound, Picture, And Ideas Have To Marry. If An Idea Carries With It A Mood, Sound Is Critical To Making That Mood.

My Cow Is Not Pretty, But It Is Pretty To Me.

The Ideas Dictate Everything.

There's A Safety In Thinking In A Diner. You Can Have Your Coffee Or Your Milkshake, And You Can Go Off Into Strange Dark Areas, And Always Come Back To The Safety Of The Diner.

I'm Convinced We All Are Voyeurs. It's Part Of The Detective Thing. We Want To Know Secrets And We Want To Know What Goes On Behind Those Windows. And Not In A Way That We Would Use To Hurt Anyone. There's An Entertainment Value To It, But At The Same Time We Want To Know: What Do Humans Do? Do They Do The Same Things As I Do? It's A Gaining Of Some Sort Of Knowledge, I Think.

Music Has Fed Me A Lot Of Ideas... The Film Blue Velvet Came Out Of Bobby Vinton's Version Of The Song Blue Velvet.

I Have To Make What I See, Whether It's A Painting, A Table, Or A Movie, Or It's Like A Death And What Would Be The Point Of That?

I Just Have To Think Of Philadelphia Now, And I Get Ideas, I Hear The Wind, And I'm Off Into The Darkness Somewhere.

Mystery Is The Number One Conjurer Of Ideas.

Film Can't Just Be A Long Line Of Bliss. There's Something We All Like About The Human Struggle.

Nowadays, People Shoot Digitally And It's All In Color, But You Press A Button And It All Goes To Black And White. But It's Not Lit For Black And White. So, It's A Tricky Thing. If You're Going Do Black And White, You Better Remember To Separate Things With Light, Because Color Ain't Gonna Be There.

Black And White

We Think We Understand The Rules When We Become Adults But What We Really Experience Is A Narrowing Of The Imagination.

I Wouldn't Know What To Do With [colour]. Colour To Me Is Too Real. It's Limiting. It Doesn't Allow Too Much Of A Dream. The More You Throw Black Into A Colour, The More Dreamy It Gets… Black Has Depth. It's Like A Little Egress; You Can Go Into It, And Because It Keeps On Continuing To Be Dark, The Mind Kicks In, And A Lot Of Things That Are Going On In There Become Manifest. And You Start Seeing What You're Afraid Of. You Start Seeing What You Love, And It Becomes Like A Dream.

In A Town Like Twin Peaks Noone Is Innocent

When You Have Something That Brings A Real Emotion, That's The Power Of Cinema.

Mankind Was Not Meant To Suffer -- Bliss Is Our Nature. The Individual Is Cosmic. Let's Rock.

Consciousness-based Education Is Just Plugging Us All Into The Beautiful, Eternal Field Within, And Then Watching Things Get Better, Which Is What Happens. It's A Field Of Infinite, Unbounded Peace Within Every Human Being, And When You Experience It, You Enliven That Peace.

Transcendental Meditation Is Like A Car, A Vehicle That Allows You To Go Within. It's A Mental Technique.

The Worst Thing About This Modern World Is That People Think You Get Killed On Television With Zero Pain And Zero Blood. It Must Enter Into Kids' Heads That It's Not Very Messy To Kill Somebody, And It Doesn't Hurt That Much. That's A Real Sickness To Me. That's A Real Sick Thing.

The World Is As You Are.

This Whole World Is Wild At Heart And Weird On Top.

Freedom. It's Like No Constraints, An Opening, And Then Barriers Going Away And Lifting And Breaking And Experimentation And...it's Like Attempting For Something.

In Hollywood, More Often Than Not, They're Making More Kind Of Traditional Films, Stories That Are Understood By People. And The Entire Story Is Understood. And They Become Worried If Even For One Small Moment Something Happens That Is Not Understood By Everyone.

We're Like Lightbulbs. If Bliss Starts Growing Inside You, It's Like A Light; It Affects The Environment.

I Would Rather Not Make A Film Than Make One Where I Don't Have Final Cut.

Secrets And Mysteries Provide A Beautiful Corridor Where You Can Float Out. The Corridor Expands And Many, Many Wonderful Things Can Happen... I Love The Process Of Going Into Mystery.

The Ocean Of Solutions Is Within, Enliven That. It's A World Of Clues, A World Of Mystery But The Mystery Can Get Solved, You Can Find A Lot Of Answers For These Things Within.

Cinema Is A Medium That Can Translate Ideas. But Wood Can Translate Ideas, Too. You Have Wood And Then You Get A Chair. Some Ideas Are For Different Things.

When You Practice Transcendental Meditation You Are Given A Key To The Deepest Level Of Life.

You Get A Painting Idea, And You Go Do That. You Get A Cinema Idea, And You Go In To Do That. The Difference Is, Even Though The Paintings Might Take Some Time To Make, With Cinema You Are Booked For A Year And A Half, Minimum.

Negativity Is The Enemy Of Creativity.

When I Was Little In Spokane, Washington I Drew All The Time... And My Father Would Bring Paper Home... And I Mostly Drew Browning Automatic Water-cooled Sub-machine Guns... That Was My Favorite.

I'm Responsible For What People See And What They Hear.

I Truly Believe There Is A Field Of Peace Within And That It Can Be Enlivened And Brought To The Surface To Be Enjoyed By All.

Eraserhead Is My Most Spiritual Movie. No One Understands When I Say That, But It Is.

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.

Unfortunately, My Ideas Are Not What You'd Call Commercial, And Money Really Drives The Boat These Days. So I Don't Know What My Future Is. I Don't Have A Clue What I'm Going To Be Able To Do In The World Of Cinema.

The Feature Film Has Changed A Lot. Art Houses Are Gone And People Show A Certain Type Of Cinema In The Big Theaters Now That, You Know, It's Not Quite Really Good For Me, And If I Made A Feature Film, I Was Think I'd Play In La And New York For A Week, And Then Go Right To Television.

Every Single Thing In The World That Was Made By Anyone Started With An Idea. So To Catch One That Is Powerful Enough To Fall In Love With, It Is One Of The Most Beautiful Experiences. It's Like Being Jolted With Electricity And Knowledge At The Same Time.

Falling In Love

I Let The Actors Work Out Their Ideas Before Shooting, Then Tell Them What Attitudes I Want. If A Scene Isn't Honest, It Stands Out Like A Sore Thumb.

In Film, Life-and-death Struggles Make You Sit Up, Lean Forward A Little Bit. They Amplify Things Happening, In Smaller Ways, In All Of Us. These Things Show Up In Relationships. They Show Up In Struggles And Bring Them To A Critical Point.

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Moustapha Akkad

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