People just were the mysterious sum of their actions.

I was forced to think very hard about what it meant to be me, what it means to be a person who is only a brain. Pascal's 'thinking reed' really does capture it, because I'm just a bunch of dead muscles thinking.

There is always an impulse to degrade people who are different from you, to diminish them, to demean them, and it never seems to go away, even when there is ample evidence that when we work together, we do better. It’s not about material progress or personal comfort. It’s about personal identity, and there are still so many forces at work in the human psyche that lead some people to think that their identity requires them to have someone to look down on or to demean or to feel that they’re superior to, and I think that that’s at the root of all this. It’s the only story in human society. Who is the other? Who is one of yours? Cain and Abel.

The stroke cut out a lot of my external trips: my sports car and golf and my cello. This [ points to hand ] is just not much use with a cello, and I was—forced inside, and finding myself living in my inside. And that has made me be part of my soul. And that's perceiving my incarnation from here [ points to heart ], rather than from here [ points to head ]. And since this is words, I start from here, go over there.

There are so many people I’ve loved working with, but you’ve got to get the right person for the project.

Absolutely. My friend Charlie Lutes said the most we can do for ourselves is to take that dive within twice a day, bringing out more and more of that consciousness within and that consciousness has qualities, qualities of intelligence, creativity, happiness, love, energy, power, peace. All these things you’re gonna get more and more of. You cannot lose.

To me, the greatest master that ever walked the earth. Maybe some could be as great, but none could be greater.

On October 13, 2020, David Lynch rose and did what he had typically been doing each morning when he awoke during a long-term Covid isolation in his house and work studio just off Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills. First, while filming himself for his YouTube channel, he swirled ten numbered balls in a large glass jar, his eyes averted, then picked one. “Today’s number is ten,” he declared.

Well, my family moved to Alexandria, Virginia from Boise, Idaho when I was in the eighth grade. Pretty soon after that, one night, on the front lawn of my girlfriend’s house, I met a boy named Toby Keeler, who went to a private school. He told me his father was a painter. At first I thought he meant a house painter, but then he said, “No, fine art painter” and a bomb went off in my head. In that millisecond, I only wanted to be a painter.

If I had found something that was better than TM, I’m not stupid, I would have gone and done that. We’re looking for the best thing we can get for ourselves.