← Nonfiction

Room to Dream

by David Lynch · 2018

In this memoir, David Lynch - co-creator of Twin Peaks and writer and director of groundbreaking films like Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive - opens up about a lifetime of extraordinary… more

18 quotes ★ 4.40 (9,611) Nonfiction

Quotes from the Book

People think anger is an edge, but anger is a weakness that poisons you and the environment around you.
14
I don't know how I got to that thing of not caring what other people think, but it's a good thing. The thing is, you fall in love with ideas and it's like falling in love with a girl. It could be a girl you wouldn't want to take home to your parents, but you don't care what anybody else thinks. You're in love and it's beautiful and you stay true to those things.
8
Many of the things I see in the world seem very beautiful, but it’s still hard for me to figure out how things can be the way they are, and I guess that’s one of the reasons why my movies tend to be open to many different interpretations.
8
David is always dealing with some sort of mystery in his work,” said Isabella Rossellini, who plays Dorothy Vallens. “He once said something that really helped me understand his work. He said, ‘In life you don’t know everything. You enter a room and people are sitting there and there’s an atmosphere, and you immediately know if you have to be careful about what you say, or if you have to be loud, or silent, or subdued—you immediately know it. The thing you don’t know is what’s next. In life we don’t know where the story is going or even where a conversation is going to go in the next minute.’ David’s awareness of this is central to his films. He’s very sensitive to the mystery that surrounds everything.
7
you keep your eye on the donut not the hole.
6
If I had a type, I guess you could say I liked brunettes the best, and I kind of liked librarian types, you know, their outer appearance hiding smoldering heat inside….
6
Ultimately, each life is a mystery until we each solve the mystery, and that's where we are all headed whether we know it or not.
5
Cast as Lucy Moran, the eccentric secretary at the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department, Kimmy Robertson recalled the shooting of the pilot as “heaven. It was pure fun, and there were silly things with David that were magical to me. If I asked him nicely, he let me run my fingers through his hair. The hair that grows on top of that head and what’s inside that head—you can feel that in his hair. David’s hair does something and it has a function and the function has to do with God.
3
You can tell all the stories you want, but you still haven’t gotten across what the experience was like. It’s like telling somebody a dream. It doesn’t give them the dream. So
2
Human consciousness is too vast to fit between the covers of a book, and every experience has too many facets to count.
2
Jennifer Lynch: "My father deeply loved both of his parents, but he also despised all that goodness, the white picket fence and all that. He has a romantic idea of that stuff, but he also hated it because he wanted to smoke cigarettes and live the art life, and they went to church and everything was perfect and quiet and good. It made him a little nutty.
2
What you’re reading here is basically a person having a conversation with his own biography.
2
In Lynch’s realm, America is like a river that flows ever forward, carrying odds and ends from one decade into the next, where they intermingle and blur the dividing lines we’ve invented to mark time.
1
Lynch began classes on September 25th, joining the members of the AFI’s first graduating class, which included filmmakers Terrence Malick, Caleb Deschanel, Tim Hunter, and Paul Schrader.
Bushnell helped a lot during those years, but, generally, being a teenager wasn’t that great for me. Being a teenager is so euphoric and thrilling, but it’s mixed with a kind of chain to jail, which is high school. It’s such a torment.
There are things we all know that we don’t look at very often,” said Robert Forster, who plays Twin Peaks sheriff Frank Truman. “Everybody knows some things are eternal, and it isn’t names or houses and it isn’t even the stars; we know in our bones there’s something eternal, though, and that it has to do with human beings. Whatever David is doing, it is of a high order, and he may be a portal to the eternal, because he asks us to find that connection to the eternal in ourselves. His work suggests that we are not just isolated atoms and that if we understand that connection to the eternal we’re capable of making better choices. Each individual can pull in a direction, and if enough of us pull in the same positive direction, there is movement that brings humanity along with it. He is leading his audience toward the good.
My father deeply loved both of his parents, but he also despised all that goodness, the white picket fence and all that. He has a romantic idea of that stuff, but he also hated it because he wanted to smoke cigarettes and live the art life, and they went to church and everything was perfect and quiet and good. It made him a little nutty.
Madison is a very enlightened, idealized Midwestern place, and the people there are friendly.

About David Lynch

We have collected 18 quotes from 1 book by David Lynch on BookQuoters.

More about the author →

About the book

In this memoir, David Lynch - co-creator of Twin Peaks and writer and director of groundbreaking films like Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive - opens up about a lifetime of extraordinary creativity, the friendships he has made along the way and the struggles he has faced - sometimes successful, sometimes not - to bring his projects to fruition.

Part-memoir, part-biography, Room to Dream interweaves Lynch's own reflections on his life with the story of those times, as told by Kristine McKenna, drawing from extensive and explosive interviews with ninety of Lynch's friends, family members, actors, agents, musicians and collaborators. Lynch responds to each recollection and reveals the inner story of the life behind the art.

Book details

First published
2018
Goodreads rating
4.40 (10k ratings)

The buzz

Keep reading