“This is the thing no one prepares you for where disaster are concerned. There is no ominous black cloud, no spooky chill, no neon sign that flashes: Stop! Please! Go back to bed! There's something really really dreadful waiting to happen around the corner! I beg of you, do not continue!”

“If there’s one thing I have learned it’s that if you carry on as though nothing strange is happening, it usually stops being strange”

“The best thing about flying first class....was that you could be as nutty as a fruitcake and were still treated like the Queen of Sheba.”

“If we are all going to have tragedies, if none of us can escape them, then surely we have to learn from them, we have to gain something. And we have to use what we have gained. Those of us who have fought tooth and nail to overcome tragedy are, after all, nothing else, proof that such things can be survived. So we can actually help others survive their tragedies too. As long as they’ll let us.”

“In my experience nobody gets to lead a totally charmed existence. Nobody escapes the pitfalls of being a human being. It’s what seperates us from the zebras. Or that’s my theory anyway”

“I wouldn't know what to do with [colour]. Colour to me is too real. It's limiting. It doesn't allow too much of a dream. The more you throw black into a colour, the more dreamy it gets… Black has depth. It's like a little egress; you can go into it, and because it keeps on continuing to be dark, the mind kicks in, and a lot of things that are going on in there become manifest. And you start seeing what you're afraid of. You start seeing what you love, and it becomes like a dream.”

“The idea tells you everything. Lots of times I get ideas, I fall in love with them. Those ones you fall in love with are really special ideas. And, in some ways, I always say, when something's abstract, the abstractions are hard to put into words unless you're a poet. These ideas you somehow know. And cinema is a language that can say abstractions. I love stories, but I love stories that hold abstractions--that can hold abstractions. And cinema can say these difficult-to-say-in-words things. A lot of times, I don't know the meaning of the idea, and it drives me crazy. I think we should know the meaning of the idea. I think about them, and I tell this story about my first feature Eraserhead. I did not know what these things meant to me--really meant. And on that particular film, I started reading the Bible. And I'm reading the Bible, going along, and suddenly--there was a sentence. And I said, forget it! That's it. That's this thing. And so, I should know the meaning for me, but when things get abstract, it does me no good to say what it is. All viewers on the surface are all different. And we see something, and that's another place where intuition kicks in: an inner-knowingness. And so, you see a thing, you think about it, and you feel it, and you go and you sort of know something inside. And you can rely on that. Another thing I say is, if you go--after a film, withholding abstractions--to a coffee place--having coffee with your friends, someone will say something, and immediately you'll say “No, no, no, no, that's not what that was about.” You know? “This is what it was about.” And so many things come out, it's surprising. So you do know. For yourself. And what you know is valid.”