Nhat Han > Nhat's Quotes

“We all want expanded consciousness and bliss. It's a natural, human desire. And a lot of people look for it in drugs. But the problem is that the body, the physiology, takes a hard hit on drugs. Drugs injure the nervous system, so they just make it harder to get those experiences on your own.
I have smoked marijuana, but I no longer do. I went to art school in the 1960s, so you can imagine what was going on. Yet my friends were the ones who said, "No, no, no, David, don't you take those drugs." I was pretty lucky.
Besides, far more profound experiences are available naturally. When your consciousness stars expanding, those experiences are there. All those things can be seen. It's just a matter of expanding that ball of consciousness. And the ball of consciousness can expand to be infinite and unbounded. It's totality. You can have totality. So all those experiences are there for you, without the side effects of drugs.”
― David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity

“Don’t fight the darkness. Don’t even worry about the darkness. Turn on the light and the darkness goes. Turn up that light of pure consciousness: Negativity goes.”
― David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity: 10th Anniversary Edition

“This idea comes to you, you can see it, but to accomplish it you need what I call a "setup." For example, you may need a working shop or a working painting studio. You may beed a working music studio. Or a computer room where you can write something. It's crucial to have a setup, so that, at any given moment, when you get an idea, you have the place and the tools to make it happen. If you don't have a setup, there are many times when you get the inspiration, the idea, but you have no tools, no place to put it together. And the idea just sits there and festers. Overtime, it will go away. You didn't filfill it--and that's just a heartache.”
― David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity

“Cinema is a language. It can say things—big, abstract things. And I love that about it. I’m not always good with words. Some people are poets and have a beautiful way of saying things with words. But cinema is its own language. And with it you can say so many things, because you’ve got time and sequences. You’ve got dialogue. You’ve got music. You’ve got sound effects. You have so many tools. And you can express a feeling and a thought that can’t be conveyed any other way. Its a magical medium. For me, it’s so beautiful to think about these pictures and sounds flowing together in time and in sequence, making something that can be done only through cinema. Its 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. When I catch an idea for a film, I fall in love with the way cinema can express it. I like a story that holds abstractions, and that’s what cinema can do.”
― David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity

“The beautiful thing is that when you catch one fish that you love, even if it’s a little fish—a fragment of an idea—that fish will draw in other fish, and they’ll hook onto it. Then you’re on your way. Soon there are more and more and more fragments, and the whole thing emerges. But it starts with desire.”
― David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity: 10th Anniversary Edition

“Intuition is seeing the solution.....its emotion and intellect going together.”
― David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity

“I love going into another world, and I love mysteries. So I don't really like to know very much ahead of time. I like the feeling of dicovery.”
― David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity

“Inside every human being is an ocean of pure, vibrant consciousness. When you “transcend” in Transcendental Meditation, you dive down into that ocean of pure consciousness. You splash into it. And it’s bliss. You can vibrate with this bliss. Experiencing pure consciousness enlivens it, expands it. It starts to unfold and grow. If you have a golf-ball-sized consciousness, when you read a book, you’ll have a golf-ball-sized understanding; when you look out a window, a golf-ball-sized awareness; when you wake up in the morning, a golf-ball-sized wakefulness; and as you go about your day, a golf-ball-sized inner happiness. But if you can expand that consciousness, make it grow, then when you read that book, you’ll have more understanding; when you look out, more awareness; when you wake up, more wakefulness; and as you go about your day, more inner happiness. You can catch ideas at a deeper level. And creativity really flows. It makes life more like a fantastic game.”
― David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity: 10th Anniversary Edition

“He whose happiness is within, whose contentment is within, whose light is all within, that yogi, being one with Brahman, attains eternal freedom in divine consciousness. BHAGAVAD-GITA”
― David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity: 10th Anniversary Edition

“Never turn down a good idea, but never take a bad idea. And meditate. It’s very important to experience that Self, that pure consciousness. It’s really helped me. I think it would help any filmmaker. So start diving within, enlivening that bliss consciousness. Grow in happiness and intuition. Experience the joy of doing. And you’ll glow in this peaceful way. Your friends will be very, very happy with you. Everyone will want to sit next to you. And people will give you money!”
― David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity: 10th Anniversary Edition

“Sitting in front of a fire is mesmerizing. It's magical. I feel the same way about electricity. And smoke. And flickering lights.”
― David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity

“The idea is the whole thing. If you stay true to the idea, it tells you everything you need to know, really. You just keep working to make it look like that idea looked, feel like it felt, sound like it sounded, and be the way it was.”
― David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity: 10th Anniversary Edition

“And it should be fun. In work and in life, we’re all supposed to get along. We’re supposed to have so much fun, like puppy dogs with our tails wagging. It’s supposed to be great living; it’s supposed to be fantastic.”
― David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity: 10th Anniversary Edition

“The thing about meditation is: You become more and more you.”
― David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity: 10th Anniversary Edition

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
― Antonio Gramsci

“I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”
― Antonio Gramsci, Antonio Gramsci: Prison Letters

“Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.”
― Linus Torvalds

“Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.”
― Linus Torvalds

“Only wimps use tape backup. REAL men just upload their important stuff on ftp and let the rest of the world mirror it.”
― Linus Torvalds

“I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.”
― Linus Torvalds

“Most good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program.”
― Linus Torvalds

“Theory and practice sometimes clash. And when that happens, theory loses.
Every single time.”
― Linus Torvalds

“Don't ever make the mistake [of thinking] that you can design something better than what you get from ruthless massively parallel trial-and-error with a feedback cycle. That's giving your intelligence much too much credit.”
― Linus Torvalds

“An ugly system is one in which there are special interfaces for everything you want to do. Unix is the opposite. It gives you the building blocks that are sufficient for doing everything. That's what having a clean design is all about.”
― Linus Torvalds, Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary

“I learned that just beneath the surface there's another world, and still different worlds as you dig deeper. I knew it as a kid, but I couldn't find the proof. It was just a kind of feeling. There is goodness in blue skies and flowers, but another force--a wild pain and decay--also accompanies everything.”
― David Lynch

“All that matters is that you are making something you love, to the best of your ability, here and now.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“If you have an idea you’re excited about and you don’t bring it to life, it’s not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. This isn’t because the other artist stole your idea, but because the idea’s time has come.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“The act of creation is an attempt to enter a mysterious realm. A longing to transcend. What we create allows us to share glimpses of an inner landscape, one that is beyond our understanding. Art is our portal to the unseen world.”
― Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being

“It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“When I had nothing to lose, I had everything. When I stopped being who I am, I found myself.”
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes