David Lynch: Likeness

“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.”

David Lynch

Introduction, p. 1
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Source: Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity
Context: 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.

Idea , Fish , Water

“I like the saying "The world is as you are."”

David Lynch book Catching the Big Fish

The Circle, p. 21
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Context: 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.
So you don’t know how it's going to hit people. But if you thought about how it's going to hit people, or if it's going to hurt someone, or if it's going to do this or do that, then you would have to stop making films. You just do these things that you fall in love with, and you never know what's going to happen.

For Wife , love , Heartbreaking , Depressing

“I like to remember things my own way. How I remembered them, not necessarily the way they happened.”

David Lynch

Source: Lost Highway

Way

“Absurdity is what I like most in life.”

David Lynch

Life

“Anger and depression and sorrow are beautiful things in a story, but they are like poison to the filmmaker or artist.”

David Lynch book Catching the Big Fish

Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit, p. 8
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Context: When I started meditating, I was filled with anxieties and fears. I felt a sense of depression and anger.
I often took out this anger on my first wife. After I had been meditating for about two weeks, she came to me and said, "What's going on?" I was quiet for a moment. But finally I said, "What do you mean?" And she said, "This anger, where did it go?" And I hadn't even realized that it had lifted.
I call that depression and anger the Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit of Negativity. It's suffocating, and that rubber stinks. But once you start meditating and diving within, the clown suit starts to dissolve. You finally realize how putrid was the stink when it starts to go. Then, when it dissolves, you have freedom.
Anger and depression and sorrow are beautiful things in a story, but they are like poison to the filmmaker or artist. They are like a vise grip on creativity. If you're in that grip, you can hardly get out of bed, much less experience the flow of creativity and ideas. You must have clarity to create. You have to be able to catch ideas.

Beauty , Anger

“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.”

David Lynch

Hate , People , Beauty , Flowers

“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

Life

“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.”

David Lynch

Source: Lynch on Lynch

Love , Dreams

“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.”

David Lynch

Source: Lynch on Lynch

Love , Dreams

“In a Town like Twin Peaks noone is innocent”

David Lynch

“All the 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.”

David Lynch

As quoted in The Making of Dune (1984) by Ed Naha, p. 213

World

“When I first heard about meditation, I had zero interest in it. I wasn't even curious. It sounded like a waste of time.
What got me interested, though, was the phrase "true happiness lies within." At first I thought it sounded kind of mean, because it doesn't tell you where the "within" is, or how to get there. But still it had a ring of truth. And I began to think that maybe meditation was a way to go within.”

David Lynch book Catching the Big Fish

The First Dive, p. 3
Catching the Big Fish (2006)

Truth , Way , Thinking , Time

“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.”

David Lynch

Interview with Chris Douridas (1997) quoted in David Lynch Interviews (2009) by Richard A. Barney

Love , World , Beauty , Idea

“I guess I got whacked hard in the mystery department when I was little. I found the world completely and totally fascinating then — it was like a dream. They say that people who think they had a happy childhood are blocking something out, but I think I really had one. Of course I had the usual fears, like going to school — I knew there was some sort of problem there. But every other person sensed that problem too, so my fears were pretty normal.”

David Lynch

McKenna interview (1992)

People , World , Fear , School

“There are so many clues and feelings in the world that it makes a mystery and a mystery means there's a puzzle to be solved. Once you think like that you're hooked on probably finding a meaning, and there' many avenues in life where we're given little indications that the mystery can one day be solved. we get little proofs, — not the big proof — but the little proofs that keep us searching.”

David Lynch

McKenna interview (1992)

Life , World , Feeling , Search

“When I first heard about meditation, I had zero interest in it. I wasn't even curious. It sounded like a waste of time.
What got me interested, though, was the phrase "true happiness lies within."”

David Lynch book Catching the Big Fish

At first I thought it sounded kind of mean, because it doesn't tell you where the "within" is, or how to get there. But still it had a ring of truth. And I began to think that maybe meditation was a way to go within.
The First Dive, p. 3
Catching the Big Fish (2006)

Happiness , Time

“The sick reality about our over dependance on language is that trying to live without it is like a blind and deaf man with no arms or legs trying to navigate a dark narrow cave, and the cave is full of tarantulas.”

David Lynch

About the human dependency on language to communicate, as quoted in The Washington Post (18 June 2011)

Dependency , Reality