David Lynch - quotes (research)

(General)

"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."

"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."

"In a large city I realized there was a large amount of fear. Coming from the Northwest it kind of hits you like a train. Like a subway. In fact, going into the subway, I felt like I was really going down into hell. As I went down the steps – going deeper and deeper into it – I realized it was almost as difficult to go back up and get out than to go through with the ride. It was the total fear of the unknown: the wind from those trains, the sounds, the smells, and the different lights and mood, that was really special in a traumatic way."

(Relevant to Blue Velvet)

"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 antscrawling all over it. I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath. Because I grew up in a perfect world, other things were a contrast."
                                                                    

(May be relevant to auteur theory and filmmaking in general)

"When you're an artist, you pick up on certain things that are in the air. You just feel it. It's not like you're sitting down, thinking, "What can I do to really mess things up?" You're getting ideas, and then the ideas feed into a story, and the story takes shape. And if you're honest about it and you're thinking about characters and what they do, you now see that your ideas are about trouble. You're feeling more depth, and you're describing something that is going on in some way."
                                                 (Lost Highway interview for Rolling Stone magazine, 1997 by Mikal Gilmore)

"It makes me uncomfortable to talk about meanings and things. It is 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 someone else."
(My Love Affair with David Lynch and Peachy Like Nietzsche: Dark Clown Porn Snuff for Terrorists and Gorefiends (2005) by Jason Rogers, p. 7)

"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."
                                                                                             (Catching the Big Fish (2007) by David Lynch)

"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."
(on Dune, David Lynch: Dune Interview)

"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. But what's so fantastic is to get down into areas where things are abstract and where things are felt, or understood in an intuitive way that, you can't, you know, put a microphone to somebody at the theatre and say 'Did you understand that?' but they come out with a strange, fantastic feeling and they can carry that, and it opens some little door or something that's magical and that's the power that film has."

"I would rather not make a film than make one where I don't have final cut."

(Relevant to Inland Empire)

"There is a plot. What would be the point of just a bunch of things? There's a story, but the story can hold abstractions. I believe in story. I believe in characters. But I believe in a story that holds abstractions, and a story that can be told based on ideas that come in an unconventional way."
                                      (about Inland Empire, from The Independent article "David Lynch: In odd we trust")