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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.

-David Lynch

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It's Better Not To

David Lynch

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

Meditation Is Not A Selfish Thing. Even Though You're Diving In And Experiencing The Self, You're Not Closing Yourself Off From The World. You're Strengthening Yourself, So That You Can Be More Effective When You Go Back Into The World.

In My Case What Happened Is That Within About Two Weeks Of Beginning Meditation, The Anger Already Started To Go Away. My Wife Came To Me And Said, "what's Going On?" And I Said, "what Are You Talking About?" To Which She Replied, "this Anger, Where Did It Go?" I Didn't Even Realize That My Anger Had Been Going Away.

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.

Mystery Is The Number One Conjurer Of Ideas.

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

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 Thing About Meditation Is: You Become More And More You.

I Love Mysteries. To Fall Into A Mystery And Its Danger ... Everything Becomes So Intense In Those Moments. When Most Mysteries Are Solved, I Feel Tremendously Let Down. So I Want Things To Feel Solved Up To A Point, But There's Got To Be A Certain Percentage Left Over To Keep The Dream Going. It's Like At The End Of Chinatown: The Guy Says, 'forget It, Jake, It's Chinatown.' You Understand It, But You Don't Understand It, And It Keeps That Mystery Alive. That's The Most Beautiful Thing.

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

Falling In Love

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.

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 Didn't Really Grow Up Listening To Blues, Because I Grew Up In The Northwest. It Wasn't Really The Center For Blues.

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.

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 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've Said Many, Many, Many Unkind Things About Philadelphia, And I Meant Every One.

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.

Consciousness-based Education, Which I Am Helping To Promote, Is Basically The Same Education That Good Schools Are Giving Today With Transcendental Meditation Added For The Students, Teachers, Staff, And Principal.

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 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.

The More You Meditate The Better Life Gets.

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.

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.

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

If A Scene Isn't Honest, It Stands Out Like A Sore Thumb.

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.

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

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

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Joining Together

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.

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

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.

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I Like To Remember Things My Own Way. How I Remembered Them, Not Necessarily The Way They Happened.

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

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.

Everyone Is On The Internet But They're Not All Talking With Each Other. There Are Groups Upon Groups Out There, But They Don't Talk To One Another. So While The Internet Brings Everyone Into A Shared Space, It Does Not Necessarily Bring Them Together.

Tied To Consciousness Are All Positive Qualities, So That Ocean Within Is An Ocean Of Unbounded Intelligence, Unbounded Creativity, Unbounded Happiness, Unbounded Love, Unbounded Energy, And Unbounded Peace. And When Students Start Expanding Consciousness In Those Positive Qualities, Their Relationships Improve, Their Grades Go Up, Their Happiness Goes Up, The Fighting And Bullying Stops, And Things Get Very, Very, Very Good.

Sex Is A Doorway To Something So Powerful And Mystical, But Movies Usually Depict It In A Completely Flat Way.

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Being In Darkness And Confusion Is Interesting To Me.

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.

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

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

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

You Could Say That Spirituality Is Bliss, And Bliss Is Physical Happiness, Emotional Happiness, Mental Happiness, And Spiritual Happiness. And It's Intense. It's An Intense Happiness. It Brings You Together With Everything.

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.

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.

Life Holds Many, Many, Many Mysteries, Abstract Things We All Think About. In A Film When Things Get Abstract, Some People Don't Appreciate That And They Want To Leave The Theater. Others Love To Dream, Get Lost, Try To Figure Things Out. I'm One Of Those People. I Like A Film, A Story That Holds Concrete Things But Also Abstractions. So When Ideas Come Along That Have Those Things, I'm Falling In Love And Going To Work.

Falling In Love

When You're Down, When You've Been Kicked Down In The Street And Then Kicked A Few More Times Until You're Bleeding And Your Teeth Are Out, Then You Only Have Up To Go. You Get Reborn Again, And Expectations Aren't So Great Because They've Taken You Away. It's Beautiful To Be Down There. It's So Beautiful!

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

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.

Instead Of Instilling Fear, If A Company Offered A Way For Everyone In The Business To Dive Within-to Start Expanding Energy And Intelligence-people Would Work Overtime For Free. They Would Be Far More Creative. And The Company Would Just Leap Forward. This Is The Way It Can Be. It's Not The Way It Is, But It Could Be That Way So Easily.

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

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.

Sleep Is Really Important. You Need To Rest The Physiology To Be Able To Work Weel And Meditate Well. When I Don't Get Enough Sleep, My Meditations Are Duller. You May Even Dip Into Sleep At The Beginning Of Your Meditation, Because You're Settling Down. But If You're Well Rested, You'll Have A Clearer Deeper Experience.

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.

I Don't Like Thomas Edison. I'm A Fan Of Nicolai Tesla.

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

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

When You Make Your First Film, It's Really Hard In Some Ways. You're Just Nowhere. But Then You Have Something. If You Have A Success, Then You Might Be Looking To Take A Fall. If You Had A Fall, You Get A Certain Kind Of Euphoria Because You're Not Dead, So You Can Still Do It Again. It's About How You Go Through The Processes. Do You Enjoy That "doing"? Is It Getting Less Fun Or More Fun?

Sex Is A Doorway To Something So Powerful And Mystical, But Movies Usually Depict It In A Completely Flat Way. Being Explicit Doesn't Tap Into The Mystical Aspect Of It Either In Fact, That Usually Kills It Because People Don't Want To See Sex So Much As They Want To Experience The Emotions That Go Along With It. These Things Are Hard To Convey In Film Because Sex Is Such A Mystery.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Technology Can Change, But Storytelling Remains The Same. It's Just A Digital World Now Instead Of An Analog World, But Now The Storytelling's The Same. You Got Different Tools. That's All.

Consciousness-based Education Is Education That Is In Most Ways Exactly Like Regular Education, But With The Added Technique Of Transcendental Meditation. Transcendental Meditation, Or Tm As It's Often Referred To, Allows Students To Dive In And Experience The Unbounded Ocean Of Consciousness Within Each Of Us, The Big Treasury, The Field Within Each Of Us That Is The Base Of All Matter And All Mind. It's Been Found That Transcending And Experiencing That Unbounded, Eternal Level Of Life Does Wonders For Education, And For Human Beings.

Float With Me In The World Of Ether.

I Hear Heroin Is A Very Popular Drug These Days.

Sometimes Film Kills The Room To Dream.

I Like To Make Films Because I Like To Go Into Another World. I Like To Get Lost In Another World. And Film To Me Is A Magical Medium That Makes You Dream... Allows You To Dream In The Dark. It's Just A Fantastic Thing, To Get Lost Inside The World Of Film.

The Ideas Dictate Everything.

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

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 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 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.

In A Town Like Twin Peaks Noone Is Innocent

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.

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

I Love Two-lane Highways. They Say Something About The Way Things Used To Be, And About Areas That Don't Have A Lot Of People. On Those Two-lanes At Night You Get The Sense Of Moving Into The Unknown, And That's As Thrilling A Sense As Human Beings Can Have.

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

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 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.

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

New Mysteries. New Day. Fresh Doughnuts.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

There Are Only 24 Hours In A Day, And My Top Priority Is Working On My Films, But I Love Short Film Experiments.

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.

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.

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.

Tenderness Can Be Just As Abstract As Insanity.

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.

Stories Hold Conflict And Contrast, Highs And Lows, Life And Death, And The Human Struggle And All Kinds Of Things.

I Find The Joy Of The 'doing' Increases. Creativity Increases. Intuition Increases. The Pleasure Of Life Grows. And Negativity Recedes.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Everybody's Got Creativity. You Just Get More Of It [when You Meditate].

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.

Falling In Love

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.

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

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

Sex Was Like A World So Mysterious To Me, I Really Couldn't Believe There Was This Fantastic Texture To Life That I Was Getting To Do...it Has All These Different Levels, From Lust And Fearful, Violent Sex To The Real Spiritual Thing At The Other End. It's The Key To Some Fantastic Mystery Of Life.

You Need Contrast And Conflict In Order To Tell A Story. Stories Need To Have Dark And Light, Turmoil, All Those Things. But That Does Not Mean The Filmmaker Has To Suffer In Order To Show The Suffering. Stories Should Have The Suffering, Not The People.

I Like The Saying: "the World Is As You Are." And I Think Films Are As You Are. That's Why, Although The Frames Of A Film Are Always The Same - The Same Number, In The Same Sequence, With The Same Sounds - Every Screening Is Different. The Difference Is Sometimes Subtle But It's There. It Depends On The Audience. There Is A Circle That Goes From The Audience To The Film And Back. Each Person Is Looking And Thinking And Feeling And Coming Up With His Or Her Own Sense Of Things. And It's Probably Different From What I Fell In Love With.

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.

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.

Let's Get Rid Of The Suffering And Bring Real Peace, Which Is Not Just The Absence Of War, But The Absence Of All Negativity.

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

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

I Don't Really Follow Television So Much, But In The Old Days There Was A Certain Way Tv Was, And It Wasn't Really Like Cinema. I Don't Know How Many Ways It Was Different Or The Same, But It Was Not Quite Like Cinema. Now, Cinema Can Happen On Television.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Fear Of The Unknown

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.

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

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.

This Is A Donut. It Is Very Sweet, And Very Good. But If You've Never Tasted A Donut, You Wouldn't Really Know How Sweet And How Good A Donut Is... Meditation Is Like That. Transcendental Meditation Gives An Experience Much Sweeter Than The Sweetness Of This Donut.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

In My Mind It's So Much Fun To Have Something That Has Clues And Is Mysterious - Something That Is Understood Intuitively Rather Than Just Being Spoon-fed To You. That's The Beauty Of Cinema, And It's Hardly Ever Even Tried. These Days, Most Films Are Pretty Easily Understood, And So People's Minds Stop Working.

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 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.

Every Teacher Of Transcendental Meditation Is A Hero.

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 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.

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

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.

Inside, We Are Ageless And When We Talk To Ourselves, It’s The Same Age Of The Person We Were Talking To When We Were Little. It’s The Body That Is Changing Around That Ageless Center.

I Always Loved Smokestack Industry, And I Love Towns Or Cities That Have Grown Up Around Factories.

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.

When We Transcend We Are Diving Into A Field Of Unbounded Creativity. This Is Real Creativity And When We Experience That And Grow In That, We Can More Easily Find Solutions To Problems. We Can Get Ideas For Whatever It Is We're Working On. And We Will Get Happier By Transcending Every Day And We Will Find That We're Happier Doing Almost Anything. We'll Get More Energy To Do Our Work.

Every Human Being Has Consciousness, But Not Every Human Being Has The Same Amount. The Potential For Each One Of Us Human Beings Is Infinite Consciousness. This Is Called Supreme Enlightenment, And It Just Needs Unfolding By Transcending Each Day. The More Consciousness We Have, The Better Life Is.

Every Viewer Is Going To Get A Different Thing. That's The Thing About Painting, Photography, Cinema.

The Artist Does Not Have To Suffer To Show Suffering.

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

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.

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 Have No Problem Getting Financing. I Have A Problem Catching Ideas That I Fall In Love With For The Next Feature.

Falling In Love

Desire For An Idea Is Like Bait. When You're Fishing, You Have To Have Patience. You Bait Your Hook, And Then You Wait. The Desire Is The Bait That Pulls Those Fish In-those Ideas.

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

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.

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

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.

You Get All The Puzzle Parts Together Enough To Say The Puzzle Is Complete. It's A Script. In The Process Of Realizing That, New Ideas Can Come, One Way Or Another. Through A Happy Accident, They Just Come To You.

You've Got To Let Accidents And Strange Things Happen - Let It Work, So It's Got An Organic Sort Of Quality ... By Trying To Remove Yourself You Can See Some Fantastic Things Sometimes.

When The Going Gets Tough, Everyone Leaves.

Going Gets Tough

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

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.

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

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

Ideas Are Floating Like Fish. Desire For An Idea Is Like A Bait On A Hook. If You Desire An Idea, It Pulls And It Makes A Kind Of A Bait. Ideas Will Come Swimming Up. And You Don't Know Them Until They Enter The Conscious Mind. And Then Bingo! There It Is! You Know It Instantly. And Then More Come In. If You Go Fishing For Ideas, A Lot Of Ideas Will Just Pop In. And One Of Them Will Make You Fall In Love.

Falling In Love

My Rule Of Thumb Is, What Siskel And Ebert Like, I Don't, And Vice Versa.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

A Lot Of Artists Think They Want Anger. But A Real, Strong, Bitter Anger Occupies The Mind, Leaving No Room For Creativity.

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.

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.

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.

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

Black Has Depth.. You Can Go Into It.. And You Start Seeing What You're Afraid Of. You Start Seeing What You Love, And It Becomes Like A Dream.

Individual Peace Is The Unit Of World Peace.

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

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Becca Fitzpatrick

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