43 quotes
Language is an evil thing, a very evil thing. And a force to be reckoned with.
There is a plot. What would be the point of just a bunch of things?
A film is its own thing and in an ideal world I think a film should be discovered knowing nothing and nothing should be added to it and nothing should be subtracted from it.
Scene by Scene interview BBC 2 (1999)
There's this beautiful ocean of bliss and consciousness that is able to be reached by any human being by diving within, which is really peaceful and harmonious and can be enlivened by the group process.
One change of attitude would change everything. If everyone realized that it could be a beautiful world and said let's not do these things anymore — let's have fun.
McKenna interview (1992)
Bullshit, that's how I feel. Total fucking bullshit.
We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experienced is a narrowing of the imagination.
McKenna interview (1992)
The beginning dictates the direction and you never know where you're going to go ... the mood is what you're looking for, and somehow we always find it.
Pretty as a Picture : The Art of David Lynch (1997)
It's not just words or music — it's a whole range of elements coming together and making something that didn't exist before. It's telling stories. It's devising a world, an experience, that people cannot have unless they see that film.
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Dark things have always existed but they used to be in a proper balance with good when life was slower.
McKenna interview (1992)
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.
My cow is not pretty, but it's pretty to me.
The ocean of solutions is within, enliven that. ... It's a world of clues, a world of mystery but the mystery can get solved, you can find a lot of answers for these things within.
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 (2006)
I love child things because there's so much mystery when you're a child.
McKenna interview (1992)
Every single thing in the world that was made by anyone started with an idea. So to catch one that is powerful enough to fall in love with, it is one of the most beautiful experiences. It's like being jolted with electricity and knowledge at the same time.
Interview with Chris Douridas (1997)
The worst thing about this modern world is that people think you get killed on television with zero pain and zero blood. It must enter into kids' heads that it's not very messy to kill somebody, and it doesn't hurt that much. That's a real sickness to me. That's a real sick thing.
The sick reality about our over dependance on language is that trying to live without it is like a blind and deaf man with no arms or legs trying to navigate a dark narrow cave, and the cave is full of tarantulas.
In film, life-and-death struggles make you sit up, lean forward a little bit. They amplify things happening, in smaller ways, in all of us. These things show up in relationships. They show up in struggles and bring them to a critical point.
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.