David Lynch Quotes

While in the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them, as anybody who has a knowledge of Chinese literature will testify.

We have a lot of suspicion of robots in the West. But if you look cross-culturally, that isn't true. In Japan, in their science fiction, robots are seen as good. They have Astro Boy, this character they've fallen in love with and he's fundamentally good, always there to help people.

When Americans talks about Europeans, they are thinking Britain and the rest of Europe. When we [ Britains] talk about Europeans, we talk about everywhere else.

I think the Westerner approaches his path through his mind. I think the Easterner approaches, largely, although not exclusively, his path through his heart.

But Americans are different from everyone else in the world - except the Canadians, and Americans are more different from the Canadians than they often think.

I think that evolution has had a hand in selecting people who had a sense of doing something beyond themselves.

Thinking that other people might be better than you is what makes you Canadian, not American.

In the name of Jerusalem. If I forget the extermination of the Jews, may my right hand wither, may my tongue stick to my palate if I cease to think of you, if I do not keep the extermination of the Jews in memory even at my happiest hour.

I think we, especially in American culture, are so afraid to talk about death. And I'm not talking about literal death. I'm talking about shedding skin. I'm talking about rebirth, ultimately, and how we continue to change as human beings and continue to grow. There's that great Henry Miller quote, "All growth is a leap in the dark."

But in the West it is very easy to dissolve the ego. So whenever a Western seeker reaches an understanding that ego is the problem he can easily dissolve it, more easily than any Eastern seeker. This is the paradox - in the West ego is taught, in the East egolessness is taught. But in the West it is easy to dissolve the ego, in the East it is very difficult.

Take my hand. We will walk. We will only walk. We will enjoy our walk without thinking of arriving anywhere.

Are there still other possibilities? Of course there are. What is important to recognize is that all three historical options are really there, and the choice will depend on our collective world behavior over the next fifty years. Whichever option is chosen, it will not be the end of history, but in a real sense its beginning. The human social world is still very young in cosmological time. In 2050 or 2100, when we look back at capitalist civilization, what will we think?

If we think today the way TV is ordering us to think, we think of Einstein as someone modern. Stravinsky is modern music, but it came at the time of Birth of a Nation, which is an old movie.

Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me. But a shift has occurred since I stepped up to take Prim's place, and now it seems I have become someone precious. At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to me. It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love.

I think the interesting aspect of life is that you're always sort of in the middle. You're never the youngest and you're never the oldest.

Thomas Gravesen thinks he's broke his hand, but I told him that you play football with your feet and not your hand.

I think this co-operative scheme is an uncommonly good one. It's much easier to work on someone else's job than one's own - gives one that delightful feelin' of interferin' and bossin' about, combined with the glorious sensation that another fellow is takin' all one's own work off one's hands.

I was trying to figure out where my intellect, if I really have one, where it fit. And so I was searching. I really didn't know who I was or what I really wanted to be, and in that search, like I think you do as an actor, you end up trying to define whatever that is, and I sort of said, "Oh well, searching spiritually in a way is interesting, and Eastern religion seems to be about a search."

I said I didn't think it would be a collectivist state so much as a wilderness in which most people lived hand to mouth, and the rich would live like princes - better than the rich had ever lived, except that their lives would constantly be in danger from the hungry predatory poor. All the technology would serve the rich, but they would need it for their own protection and to assure their continued prosperity.

People think they own time. They have watches and clocks and digital pulses. But they are wrong. Time owns them.

Every time we equip the church with a verse, chapter or a story from the Bible, we're really placing another weapon in the hands of the Holy Spirit that He uses to challenge and strengthen the church. I think that's very important.

The East is going to be pretty easy for me. The Great Chest of the West becomes the Great Beast of the East.

You can never know how your clock runs. But it does run - and always faster than you think.

In the West we cling to the past like limpets. In Haiti the present is the axis of all life. As in Africa, past and future are but distant measures of the present, and memories are as meaningless as promises.

There are so many things happening nowadays that you've seen in films from years ago, like cloning and all of those things are actually happening now, so we can kind of visualize it a lot more, and I think our generation particularly know that we're going to be a big part of that, we we're kind of fascinated with how human beings will fare in the world.