David Lynch Quotes

You need contrast and conflict in order to tell a story. Stories need to have dark and light, turmoil, all those things. But that does not mean the filmmaker has to suffer in order to show the suffering. Stories should have the suffering, not the people.

As an actress, I'm drawn to emotion and expressing the human condition in all its forms, and I'm fortunate to have thoughts and feelings at my fingertips.

Suffering is the main condition of the artistic experience.

I have the great privilege of being both witness and storyteller. Intimacy, trust and intuition guide my work.

For me, with me, making a film is always about humanity.

I find writing the darker side, writing tragedy, a lot easier than writing happiness. Happiness is just less psychologically compelling, isn't it?

I really just want to be a writer and a storyteller. But maybe pain is one of the things you have to feel in order to be creative.

As an artist, you've got to see the mess. That's what we do. We get a human being, and it's like putting together a puzzle. And the puzzle has got to be a mixture, a multifaceted mixture of human emotions, and not all of it is going to be pretty.

Suffering is a big informer, a big catalyst for creation. You take your sadness, your despair, your sense of injustice, and you put it in your work.

No flower of art ever fully blossomed save it was nourished by tears of agony.

I'm just always making things that are personal but hopefully also inspiring, and share not just my story, but other people's stories.

Inspiration needs disease, injury, madness.

A writer or any suffering artist-to-be is just an instrument too finely set to the human condition [...]

Any great movie you watch has some element of darkness or loss or some suffering in it. That's what makes the fun parts fun.

Art comes from joy and pain...But mostly from pain.

My favorite stories are human, so I'm always looking for...

People at a point of conflict are always the most interesting stories to tell.

After having read a lot of fiction, literature, whatever you want to call it, from Wolfe to Houellebecq, I think you have to have an understanding and insight of the human condition that is informed and motivated by a desire to immerse yourself in the human world and bring these stories to bear.

I think most people who decide to become a musician have to be prepared for some degree of struggle. It makes the art better if you go through some struggles. To be an artist, in any form, you have to develop some sense of compassion and empathy - it's an important quality for everyone to have, on a human level. But I think, as part of our job, you have to be able to do that, so suffering, tends - if you allow it - to let you look on the bright side. It will help with those senses.

It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another.

What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.

Acting is an imaginative leap, really, isn't it? And imaginations prosper in different circumstances.

I love the art form of songwriting. I get to carry a lot of vibes to a lot of people. My songs are all about the human condition, and people will be able to find themselves in my songs.

I think a lot of songwriters would agree that it's often easier to find inspiration in misery.