The only thing that disturbs me is that many psychopaths say they had a very happy childhood.
I don’t think anybody really loves the sound of their own voice, but the tweakability is huge.
In film, life-and-death struggles make you sit up, lean forward a little bit. They amplify things happening, in smaller ways, in all of us. These things show up in relationships. They show up in struggles and bring them to a critical point.
Someday, hopefully very soon, ‘diving within’ as a preparation for learning and as a tool for developing the creative potential of the mind will be a standard part of every school’s curriculum.
It’s important that a film is loud and I hope many people agree. You should be inside of a film when you go into a theater. It should surround you, envelope you, so you can live inside a dream.
Desire for an idea is like bait. When you’re fishing, you have to have patience. You bait your hook, and then you wait. The desire is the bait that pulls those fish in-those ideas.
Be true to yourself. Don’t take no for an answer. And start your Transcendental Meditation.
A film is its own thing and in an ideal world I think a film should be discovered knowing nothing and nothing should be added to it and nothing should be subtracted from it.
Transcendental Meditation is not a religion, it’s not against any religion, it’s for human beings, no matter what color, what religion, what walk of life. If you’re a human being, it will work for you. And you will be very glad you found this technique and took advantage of it.
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 take those drugs.” I was pretty lucky.
My movies are film-paintings – moving portraits captured on celluloid. I’ll layer that with sound to create a unique mood – like if the Mona Lisa opened her mouth, and there would be a wind, and she’d turn back and smile. It would be strange and beautiful.
The side effect of expanding consciousness is that negativity starts to evaporate; it goes away like darkness when you turn on a light.
But if you can expand that consciousness, make it grow, then when you read about that book, you’ll have more understanding; when you look out, more awareness; when you wake up, more wakefulness; as you go about your day, more inner happiness.
I have a profound admiration for Fellini. I met him lately and he’s just fantastic. I feel very close to him even though he’s very Italian. But his films could have been made in every country. When I say, I feel close to him, then also because we’re both born on January 20th.
When you sleep, you don’t control your dream. I like to dive into a dream world that I’ve made, a world I chose and that I have complete control over.
Consciousness-Based Education is just plugging us all into the beautiful, eternal field within, and then watching things get better, which is what happens. It’s a field of infinite, unbounded peace within every human being, and when you experience it, you enliven that peace.
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.
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.
Don’t make a film if it can’t be the film you want to make. It’s a joke, and a sick joke, and it’ll kill you.
Individual peace is the unit of world peace.