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David Lynch Quotes



I finished the Twin Peaks series last night, and am going to watch Fire Walk With Me this afternoon. It’s funny cause I’m not sure how much I really want to talk about the whole thing. It almost seems like trying to cram it into words would really kind of ruin it. Maybe I’ll want to do that later on once I’ve gained some distance from it, but right now, it seems more like I should sit back and let it “do it’s thing.”

In any event, I was browsing around a little bit and found a halfway decent site with some general info and interpretation of the series. I haven’t really looked around it much. I started to, but then thought better of it. The thing I did like though was this page of quotes they collected from David Lynch. It seems like he shares my general attitude about not talking about the meaning of it all too much. Some choice selections:

“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.” […]

“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.” […]

“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.”

There are some other good quotes there which are worth checking out. I’ll probably hunt around for a bit more interview-style stuff from Lynch, as he seems like a very interesting guy.

It’s funny to me to find out that he feels this way about his work (and life in general) because that was really one of the biggest lessons I took to heart while watching the series: about not getting trapped in some invented “meaning” but allowing yourself to get carried away with the experience of it. It’s exactly what inspired my recent post about dream interpretation. Overall, I have to admit that the whole experience has really got me re-evaluating not just my writing style but my whole methodology of inquiry. It’s helping me re-cast what’s really important and what’s okay for us to let go of.

More on all this as it develops.

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3 Reader Responses

  1. alistair Says:
    November 19th, 2005 at 9:04 pm

    i think that understanding that life doesn`t make sense is one of the first steps to becoming free.
    the idea of common sense, logic, reason, truth, etc. are all hallucinations that induce inflexibility in thinking. imagine if we really did need to have all the answers before we began our lives. nobody would get very far. having faith in the fact that the sun will come up in the morning is enough for me to confidently put my head on the pilow at night. it has been said elsewhere that christianity was based on an ancient sun cult, with the resurrection of jesus as a celebration of the dawn. it would seem reasonable. look at what the sun provides. why not worship it?
    we live in an age of reason. we are emerging into something else though.
    waiting to have a reason to do simple things, like feeling good, seems like an opportunity wasted. then we can experience things while feeling good. i, personally, prefer it.

  2. Bill Says:
    November 19th, 2005 at 11:08 pm

    Signs are really simple. ‘This’ stands for ‘that’ and such. But symbols are qualitatively different. They’re half rational and half irrational, and they are critical for connecting people and societies with their ancient roots. You’re not supposed to understand them you’re supposed to abide with them; you’re supposed to be in orbit around them. David Lynch is really gifted in going down to the mothers and bringing back the symbols. I think he did an outstanding job with ‘Dune,’ which, of course, was created by yet another master of the craft.

  3. On Mulholland Drive - Pop Occulture Says:
    December 12th, 2005 at 4:29 pm

    […] and explain was going to suck all the juice out of it. And I just keep going back to those David Lynch quotes I found: “It’s better not to know so much about what thi […]



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