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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.

-David Lynch

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Sex Is A Doorway

David Lynch

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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.

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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.

These Growth Hormones, Where Can I Get A Bunch Of Them? Is There Some Way That, With Electricity, You Could Stimulate Your Own Growth Hormones? Plug Yourself In For Five Minutes, There'd Be A Little Jolt, But You'd Get Used To It. It Wouldn't Be Bad At All; In Fact, You'd Get To Enjoy It, Probably. Then Away You'd Go, And Youth Wouldn't Be Wasted On The Young Anymore. You'd Be 25, With A 95-year-old Mind. Granddad Would Start Breaking Into Liquor Stores And Staying Out Late. Hope We Have It Soon!

Growth Hormones

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

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.

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.

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

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

A Film Is Its Own Thing And In An Ideal World I Think A Film Should Be Discovered Knowing Nothing And Nothing Should Be Added To It And Nothing Should Be Subtracted From It.

Knowing Nothing

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

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

Fear Of The Unknown

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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

It's Crazy To Close Doors To Any Genres.

When The Going Gets Tough, Everyone Leaves.

Going Gets Tough

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.

The Ideas Dictate Everything.

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

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.

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

Humor Is Very Interesting To Me. My Films Are Not Comedies, But There's Comedy In Them From Time To Time, Absurdities, Just Like In Real Life.

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.

As A Teenager, I Was Really Trying To Have Fun 24 Hours A Day. I Didn't Start Thinking Until I Was 20 Or 21. I Was Doing Regular Goof-ball Stuff.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Films Are 50 Percent Visual And 50 Percent Sound. Sometimes Sound Even Overplays The Visual.

I'm Not Any Different Than Anybody Else. But I Do See A World, For Me, That's Getting Better And Better, Not Worse And Worse. And I Believe That World Peace Is Coming Quicker Than We Think. And I Believe That People Are Not Only Yearning For It But Will See A Way To Get It And Help That Way To Come Sooner. And It's Going To Be Beautiful.

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.

Everyone's Got Consciousness.. . Grow That Ball Of Consciousness And All Avenues Of Life Improve. Your Work Just Blossoms.

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.

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.

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

Absurdity Is What I Like Most In Life.

Absurdity Of Life

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Thought When I Started Meditation That I Was Going To Get Real Calm And Peaceful And It's Going To Be Over. It's Not That Way; It's So Energetic. That's Where All The Energy And Creativity Is.

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

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.

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.

Mystery Is The Number One Conjurer Of Ideas.

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

Every Teacher Of Transcendental Meditation Is A Hero.

My Movies Are Film-paintings - Moving Portraits Captured On Celluloid. I'll Layer That With Sound To Create A Unique Mood -- Like If The Mona Lisa Opened Her Mouth, And There Would Be A Wind, And She'd Turn Back And Smile. It Would Be Strange And Beautiful.

The More You Meditate The Better Life Gets.

What Do You Fear, Most Of All? The Possibility That Love May Not Be Enough.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

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

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 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.

New Mysteries. New Day. Fresh Doughnuts.

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

Transcendental Meditation

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.

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.

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

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.

In A Town Like Twin Peaks Noone Is Innocent

Tenderness Can Be Just As Abstract As Insanity.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 Side Effect Of Expanding Consciousness Is That Negativity Starts To Evaporate; It Goes Away Like Darkness When You Turn On A Light.

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.

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.

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.

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.

All My Movies Are About Strange Worlds That You Can't Go Into Unless You Build Them And Film Them. That's What's So Important About Film To Me. I Just Like Going Into Strange Worlds.

The World Is As You Are.

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.

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.

I Just Like Going Into Strange Worlds.

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

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.

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.

I Felt I Should Have Been The Happiest Person In The World. But I Looked Inside, And That Happiness Was Only On The Surface, Not So Deep. Beneath It Was Hollow. Up Until That Time, I Had Been Thinking Meditation Was A Joke, A Fad And A Waste Of Time.

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

I've Loved Music Always, And My Music Fire Was Lit By Elvis Presley, Really, And All That Was Happening Back Then.

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.

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.

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. When You Put A Sound To Something And It's Wrong, It's So Obvious. When It's Right, The Whole Is Greater Than The Sum Of The Parts. That's A Magical Thing That Can Happen In Cinema.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sometimes I Get An Idea For Cinema. And When You Get An Idea That You Fall In Love With, This Is A Glorious Day.

Falling In Love

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

There Is An Ocean Of Creativity Within Every Human Being.

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.

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.

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

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

Individual Peace Is The Unit Of World Peace.

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.

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.

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.

Cigarettes Are Pretty Much My Worst Vice, And I Even Stopped Smoking For 20 Years. I Spend Most Of My Free Time With My Family And Working On Art.

I Don't Like The Word Ironic. I Like The Word Absurdity, And I Don't Really Understand The Word 'irony' Too Much. The Irony Comes When You Try To Verbalize The Absurd. When Irony Happens Without Words, It's Much More Exalted.

Transcending Gives A Human Being A Chance To Think Before Acting. And Experiencing This Beautiful Treasury Within Gets Rid Of Torment And Replaces It With Happiness, Inner Peace, Creativity Intelligence, Love, Energy. This Fuels A Real Good Life And Fuels An Appreciation For All Human Beings. It's So Powerful And It's A Blessing For Humanity.

The Big Treasury Is An Ocean Of Infinite Creativity. It's A Creativity That Creates Everything That Is A Thing - It's Mighty Powerful 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.

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

A Film - Especially When It's A Personal Film - Is Going To Hit Somebody Or It's Not. There's Nothing You Can Do About It.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There's So Many Problems In Our World, So Much Negativity. Don't Worry About The Darkness - Turn On The Light And The Darkness Automatically Goes. Ramp Up The Light Of Unity Within - Help Do That For Yourself, Help Do That For The World And Then We're Really Doing Something, We're Doing Something That Brings That Light Of Unity.

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

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.

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 Love Seeing People Come Out Of Darkness.

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.

Achievement Is Its Own Reward

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

I Think Part Of The Reason Ideas Haven't Come In Is That The World Of Cinema Is Changing So Drastically, And In A Weird Way, Feature Films I Think Have Become Cheap. Everything Is Kind Of Throwaway. It's Experienced And Then Forgotten.

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.

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

I'm Obsessed With Textures. We're Surrounded By So Much Vinyl That I Find Myself Constantly In Pursuit Of Other Textures. One Time I Removed All The Hair From A Mouse With Nair-hair Just To See What It Looked Like. And It Looked Beautiful.

I Hear Heroin Is A Very Popular Drug These Days.

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.

Be True To Yourself. Don't Take No For An Answer. And Start Your Transcendental Meditation.

Be True To Yourself

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Negativity Is The Enemy Of Creativity.

The Ideas Dictate Everything, You Have To Be True To That Or You're Dead.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Directors Who Have Inspired Me Include Billy Wilder, Federico Fellini, Lngmar Bergman, John Ford, Orson Welles, Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola And Ernst Lubitsch. In Art School, I Studied Painters Like Edward Hopper, Who Used Urban Motifs, Franz Kafka Is My Favorite Novelist. My Approach To Film Stems From My Art Background, As I Go Beyond The Story To The Sub-conscious Mood Created By Sound And Images.

I Love Child Things Because There's So Much Mystery When You're A Child. When You're A Child, Something As Simple As A Tree Doesn't Make Sense. You See It In The Distance And It Looks Small, But As You Go Closer, It Seems To Grow - You Haven't Got A Handle On The Rules When You're A Child. We Think We Understand The Rules When We Become Adults But What We Really Experienced Is A Narrowing Of The Imagination.

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

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.

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.

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

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Liberty Hyde Bailey

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