I didn`t watch much TV as a kid and I don` t watch it now. I don` t find anything beautiful or unique to the medium, and the only thing you can do on TV that you can`t do in film is make a continuing story - which is so cool!

This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top.

I sort of go by a duck when I work on a film because if you study a duck, you`ll see certain things. You`ll see a bill, and the bill is a certain texture and a certain length. Then you`ll see a head, and the features on the head are a certain texture and it`s a certain shape and it goes into the neck. The texture of the bill for instance is very smooth and it has quite precise detail in it and it reminds you somewhat of the legs. The legs are a little bit bigger and a little more rubbery but it`s enough so that your eye goes back and forth. Now, the body being so big, it can be softer and the texture is not so detailed, it`s just kind of a cloud. And the key to the whole duck is the eye and where the eye is placed. And it has to be placed in the head and it`s the most detailed, and it`s like a little jewel. And if it was fixed, sitting on the bill, it would be two things that were too busy, battling, they would not do so well. And if it was sitting in the middle of the body, it would get lost. But it`s so perfectly placed to show off a jewel right in the middle of the head like that, next to this S-curve with the bill sitting out in front, but with enough distance so that the eye is very very very well secluded and set out. So when you`re working on a film, a lot of times you can get the bill and the legs and the body and everything, but this eye of the duck is a certain scene, this jewel, that if it`s there, it`s absolutely beautiful. It`s just fantastic." "Film exists because we can go and have experiences that would be pretty dangerous or strange for us in real life. We can go into a room and walk into a dream. If we didn`t want to upset anyone, we would make films about sewing, but even that could be dangerous. But I think finally, in a film, it is how the balance is and the feelings are. But I think there has to be those contrasts and strong things withing a film for the total experience.

In a large city I realized there was a large amount of fear. Coming from the Northwest, it kind of hits you like a train.

Sex is a doorway to something so powerful and mystical, but movies usually depict it in a completely flat way.

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.

The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you`re dead.

I`ve said many, many, many unkind things about Philadelphia, and I meant every one.

[on plans to build 100 transcendental meditation centers to bring an end to crime and war]: "Peace could be on this Earth this year. It would be a whole new world."

The concept of absurdity is something I`m attracted to.

Television provides the opportunity for an ongoing story - the opportunity to meld the cast and the characters and a world, and to spend more time there.

My father was a scientist for the Forest Service. He would drive me through the woods in his green Forest Service truck, over dirt roads, through the most beautiful forests where the trees are very tall and shafts of sunlight come down and in the mountain streams the rainbow trout leap out and their little trout sides catch glimpses of light. Then my father would drop me in the woods and go off. It was a weird, comforting feeling being in the woods. There were odd, mysterious things. That`s the kind of world I grew up in.

It turns out, at least in my opinion, she`s an unbelievable actress and there are things that she`s done in this movie that are truly incredible. I haven`t seen too many people get into a role and give it as much. So, the big news for me was this person was hired to be a dead girl and turns out to be a great actress and a perfect Laura Palmer - on Sheryl Lee and her performance in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992).

Somewhere in talking and rehearsing, there is a magical moment where actors catch a current, they`re on the right road. If they really catch it, then whatever they do from then on is correct and it all comes out of them from that point on.

I would rather not make a film than make one where I don`t have final cut.

I`m convinced we all are voyeurs. It`s part of the detective thing. We want to know secrets and we want to know what goes on behind those windows. And not in a way that we would use to hurt anyone. There`s an entertainment value to it, but at the same time we want to know: What do humans do? Do they do the same things as I do? It`s a gaining of some sort of knowledge, I think.

My cow is not pretty, but it is pretty to me.

I`m not a real film buff. Unfortunately, I don`t have time. I just don`t go. And I become very nervous when I go to a film because I worry so much about the director and it is hard for me to digest my popcorn.

There`s something deeply satisfying about directing the flow of water.

[On actor Kyle MacLachlan]: "What do we do together? I have a pretty good cappuccino machine, and anytime he gets the urge, he comes on over. We talk about the problems associated with getting a good cup of coffee."

I`m not sure what these people are saying. Is it that if you depicted no graphic violence, the world would calm down and there would be less violence? Or is it that if you sense certain things about violence and then portray those things in a film, does that make the violence go to another level? Or is the violence in films a way to experience something without having to do it in real life?

I think that ideas exist outside of ourselves. I think somewhere, we`re all connected off in some very abstract land. But somewhere between there and here ideas exist. And I think the mind isn`t conscious enough to go all the way to where we`re connected, but it`s conscious of a certain amount of that territory. And when these ideas fly into the conscious part, then you can capture them. But if they`re outside of the conscious part, you don`t even know about them. So you just hope that you can make the conscious part of your mind bigger or that these ideas will fly into your airspace, so you can shoot them down and grab them and take them home. So that`s all you try to do. Sometimes an idea will strike you when you`re sitting in a quiet chair. But sometimes an idea will strike you when you`re standing. Sometimes music will also help you. If I thought I could just sit still in a quiet place and get ideas, I would do that all the time, but sometimes nothing happens. There`s no rhyme or reason to it. But you`ve got to write them down right away. I forget so many things. Then if I forget it and try to remember it, my whole day is ruined because I can`t remember and I feel horrible. And I imagine that it was one of the all time great ideas. And it probably isn`t.

I let the actors work out their ideas before shooting, then tell them what attitudes I want. If a scene isn`t honest, it stands out like a sore thumb.

(his films) mean different things to different people. Some mean more or less the same things to a large number of people. It`s okay. Just as long as there`s not one message, spoon-fed. That`s what films by committee end up being, and it`s a real bummer to me...Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be allowed to be, too.

Cigarettes are pretty much my worst vice, and I even stopped smoking for 20 years. I spend most of my free time with my family and working on art.

[Hearing about Elvis Presley had Elvis reportedly told one of his backup singers that he thought no one would ever remember him]: That`s incredible. Elvis swims in our minds, and in the emotions all through time.

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.

In Hollywood, more often than not, they`re making more kind of traditional films, stories that are understood by people. And the entire story is understood. And they become worried if even for one small moment something happens that is not understood by everyone. But what`s so fantastic is to get down into areas where things are abstract and where things are felt, or understood in an intuitive way that, you can`t, you know, put a microphone to somebody at the theatre and say `Did you understand that?` but they come out with a strange, fantastic feeling and they can carry that, and it opens some little door or something that`s magical and that`s the power that film has.

[On his 1965 sojourn to Europe to study art] "I didn`t take to Europe. I was all the time thinking, this is where I`m going to be painting. And there was no inspiration there at all for the kind of work I wanted to do."

Sex is a doorway to something so powerful and mystical, but movies usually depict it in a completely flat way. Being explicit doesn`t tap into the mystical aspect of it either in fact, that usually kills it because people don`t want to see sex so much as they want to experience the emotions that go along with it. These things are hard to convey in film because sex is such a mystery.

All my movies are about strange worlds that you can`t go into unless you build them and film them. That`s what`s so important about film to me. I just like going into strange worlds.

Sex was like a world so mysterious to me, I really couldn`t believe there was this fantastic texture to life that I was getting to do...it has all these different levels, from lust and fearful, violent sex to the real spiritual thing at the other end. It`s the key to some fantastic mystery of life.

Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there`s humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd.

To give a sense of place, to me, is a thrilling thing. And a sense of place is made up of details. And so the details are incredibly important. If they`re wrong, then it throws you out of the mood. And so the sound and music and color and shape and texture, if all those things are correct and a woman looks a certain way with a certain kind of light and says the right word, you`re gone, you`re in heaven. But it`s all the little details.

Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there`s humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd.

My mother refused to give me coloring books as a child. She probably saved me, Because when you think about it, what a coloring book does is completely kill creativity.

I like cappuccino, actually. But even a bad cup of coffee is better than no coffee at all.

I love that film. I say now that The Straight Story is my most experimental movie, but up until then, Fire Walk With Me was my most experimental film, and some of the things, the combos, you know, like, sequences... It was a dark film, but like Peggy Lipton said in an interview, it was just too much in people`s faces, and it didn`t have the humour of Twin Peaks. So it was what it was supposed to be, but it wasn`t what people wanted. It was supposed to be stand-alone, but it was also supposed to be the last week of Laura Palmer`s life. And all those things that had been established, they could be pleasant on one level to experience, but unpleasant on another level. - On Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

[On why his officially sanctioned DVDs contain no chapter stops]: "It is my opinion that a film is not like a book--it should not be broken up. It is a continuum and should be seen as such."

You`re right on the money with that. We`re all like detectives in life. There`s something at the end of the trail that we`re all looking for.

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.

As a teenager, I was really trying to have fun 24 hours a day. I didn`t start thinking until I was 20 or 21. I was doing regular goof-ball stuff.

There was nothing much going on upstairs until the age of nineteen.

I like to make films because I like to go into another world. I like to get lost in another world. And film to me is a magical medium that makes you dream...allows you to dream in the dark. It`s just a fantastic thing, to get lost inside the world of film.

I let the actors work out their ideas before shooting, then tell them what attitudes I want. If a scene isn`t honest, it stands out like a sore thumb.

I like things to be orderly. For seven years I ate at Bob`s Big Boy. I would go at 2:30, after the lunch rush. I ate a chocolate shake and four, five, six, seven cups of coffee--with lots of sugar. And there`s lots of sugar in that chocolate shake. It`s a thick shake. In a silver goblet. I would get a rush from all this sugar, and I would get so many ideas! I would write them on these napkins. It was like I had a desk with paper. All I had to do was remember to bring my pen, but a waitress would give me one if I remembered to return it at the end of my stay. I got a lot of ideas at Bob`s.

[On his 1965 sojourn to Europe to study art] "I intended to stay three years. Instead, I stayed 15 days! I remember lying in an Athens basement with lizards crawling along the walls and contemplating that I was 7,000 miles from McDonalds!"