The Red Room. Two whole books — Room to Dream and Catching the Big Fish — read entire; the sourced quotes; a set of playable meditations; his eccentricities and his weather reports; his Tbilisi interview with Radio Liberty; and seven of his lines given the animation they deserve.
He caught ideas like fish. He drank the same milkshake at the same diner for seven years, meditated twice a day for fifty, reported the Los Angeles weather most mornings, and made some of the strangest and most beautiful films anyone has made. Painter, sound-designer, woodworker, weatherman — Lynch treated the whole of life as one continuous act of attention, and insisted, against all the evidence of his own films, that the world could be a beautiful place. Below: two of his books entire, his sourced words, a few things you can actually sit and do, and the man himself.
Seven ways in
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.
— Catching the Big Fish, 200601
Keep your eye on the doughnut, not on the hole.
— his standing maxim02
I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me. People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it.
— David Lynch03
We are like the dreamer who dreams, and then lives inside the dream.
— Twin Peaks: The Return, Part 1404
Black has depth. You can go into it, and you start seeing what you’re afraid of. You start seeing what you love, and it becomes like a dream.
— on the colour black05
A damn fine cup of coffee — black as midnight on a moonless night.
— Agent Cooper, Twin Peaks06
Fix your hearts or die.
— Gordon Cole, Twin Peaks: The Return07
The Books, Entire
Both of Lynch's essential books, unabridged. Room to Dream is the double self-portrait — Kristine McKenna's reported biography of each period, answered in Lynch's own voice. Catching the Big Fish is the small, luminous handbook on where ideas come from and how meditation lets you catch them.
The book · complete & unabridged
Room to Dream
David Lynch & Kristine McKenna, 2018 — a life told twice over: her reported biography, and then, in his own voice, his memory of the same years. 19 chapters · 186k words, entire.
The book · dip in anywhere
Catching the Big Fish
Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity (2006) — 87 short chapters, entire. Pick one from the tray, or let the deep hand you one.
Introduction
Catching the Big Fish
INTRODUCTION
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.
I look for a certain kind of fish that is important to me, one that can translate to cinema. But there are all kinds of fish swimming down there. There are fish for business, fish for sports. There are fish for everything.
Everything, anything that is a thing, comes up from the deepest level. Modern physics calls that level the Unified Field. The more your consciousness—your awareness—is expanded, the deeper you go toward this source, and the bigger the fish you can catch.
My thirty-three-year practice of the Transcendental Meditation program has been central to my work in film and painting and to all areas of my life. For me it has been the way to dive deeper in search of the big fish. In this book, I want to share some of those experiences with you.
The deck · 43 sourced lines
Deal me a Lynch
Choose your waters, then deal. Every card is a sourced quotation.
cinema
All the 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.
— The Making of Dune (1984)
1 / 43
Sit With It — Playable Meditations
Lynch's whole argument was that you go within. Here are three things you can actually do, not just read. Start with the breath, dive when you're ready, and — if you have twenty minutes — keep his standing appointment.
A meditation · playable
A Slow Breath
Before the dive, settle the surface. Follow the light: in, hold, out, rest.
A meditation · playable
Dive Within
He dove twice a day for fifty years. Descend the ocean of consciousness — the deeper you go, the bigger the fish.
The Surface0
True happiness lies within. But it doesn’t tell you where the "within" is, or how to get there.
A meditation · playable
Twenty Minutes, Twice a Day
His dosage, unbroken for fifty years. Close your eyes; let the timer hold the twenty.
20:00
The habits
A regular life, lived strangely
He was the most eccentric man in America and the most routine one, at the same time.
🥤
Bob’s Big Boy, seven years
Nearly the same lunch every day for about seven years: a chocolate milkshake and cup after cup of over-sweetened coffee, ideas scribbled on square paper napkins.
🕝
2:30 on the dot
He arrived at precisely 2:30 p.m. — late enough that the milkshake mix had cooled and wouldn’t come out runny.
🧂
Granulated happiness
He was convinced sugar fed ideas — watched the granules dissolve, called sugar "like a drug… it revs you up."
🔪
Frank Booth was born there
The Blue Velvet villain was sparked by a man Lynch clocked at the Bob’s Big Boy counter.
🧘
Twenty minutes, twice a day
Transcendental Meditation every single day since July 1973 — by his account, not one missed sit in over fifty years.
🚬
Started smoking at eight
A lifelong chain smoker; he only quit in 2022, after an emphysema diagnosis.
🪚
He built his own furniture
A serious woodworker who showed a furniture collection in Milan in 1997; his own designs turn up in Lost Highway.
🎬
Five years on Eraserhead
Shot over half a decade on a shoestring — and for a stretch he simply lived on the set.
☕
A damn fine cup
"Even bad coffee is better than no coffee at all." He later played Agent Cooper in Georgia Coffee commercials in Japan.
👔
The uniform
Decades in the same white shirt, buttoned all the way to the top collar.
⚡
Factories & electricity
A lifelong fascination with industry, decay, and electricity — the hum and hiss under Eraserhead’s soundtrack.
🌤
The weatherman
For years he reported the Los Angeles weather nearly every morning: the date, the temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius, and whether there were "blue skies and golden sunshine."
The daily report
Here in L.A., blue skies and golden sunshine
Nearly every morning — on Indie 103.1 from 2005, then online, then daily on YouTube through the pandemic until December 2022 — he gave the day’s weather: the date, the temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius, a look out the window, and a wish for a good day.
Good morning. It’s a beautiful day here in L.A.
Blue skies and golden sunshine, all along the way.
His first visit to Georgia, November 2017: to launch the David Lynch Foundation Caucasus, to dream up a Tbilisi film university, and to address Parliament. RFE/RL’s Georgian Service — Radio Tavisupleba, Salome Asatiani — sat down with him.
I love Georgia, I love the people — so warm, intelligent, creative.
We’re going to find a peace in the world very soon — and Georgia is going to play a role in this.
When I first started meditating I had a lot of anger, and within two weeks that anger just lifted away, without me even trying.
All kinds of fear leave you. You start enjoying life. You start seeing a brighter, more beautiful world.
I haven’t even left yet, and I’m already thinking of coming back.