David Lynch

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.

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 don't remember my dreams too much. I hardly have ever gotten ideas from nighttime dreams. But I love daydreaming and dream logic and the way dreams go.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Film can't just be a long line of bliss. There's something we all like about the human struggle.