"Half the film is picture, the other half is sound. They've got to work together. I keep saying that there are ten sounds that will be correct and if you get one of them, you're there. But there are thousands that are incorrect, so you just have to keep on letting it talk to you and feel it. It's not an intellectual sort of thing."

"I listened to tons of music and some of it talks to me for this scene or that. I don't really know why, but each piece that ends up in the film supports the scene and makes the whole greater than the sum of the parts."

"I heard the song [This Mortal Coil's "Song to the Siren"] in the 80's and I'm not sure whether it was 85, but I really pretty desperately wanted to use it in Blue Velvet and it was tied up in some sort of legal thing, or it was either that or something involving a lot of money and we couldn't get it. And it broke my heart..."
"I'd been waiting and waiting and there it was [another opportunity to use the song] and its definitely high on my list as one of all time most beautiful songs"

"Marilyn [Manson] is a guy who I think is sitting on a very modern thing and getting bigger every day"

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"David and Angelo work together in such a way that long before they went to Prague, they had a couple sessions where they sat down and came up with some melodies that Angelo eventually translated to orchestral arrangements. Some of the music, like the end title music by David Bowie, was chosen by David in pre-production. He knew right away that's what he wanted for the end titles. Billy Corgan, Trent Reznor and some of that other stuff came in at the eleventh hour, and we had to figure out a place for them. We actually replaced a song with a song from Smashing Pumpkins."

"Music came in different stages. All through post-production, David listened to music. He listens to music while he thinks about writing. It's really integral to him. He knows when something is completely ready and when it's not. We use temporary music tracks, but the problem with temp tracks is you aren't using what you want in the end. The music will change, and your picture changes in how it's cut, which changes the internal rhythm of a scene and how it feels. We only use temp music as part of the process of selection. Once a song is in there, it's pretty much going to stay, except in that one case."

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"He talked really loudly, like the guy in 'Twin Peaks' who's hard of hearing. He'd say, 'I've got a chase scene, and I'm picturing insects swarming around'. Then he'd scribble on pieces of paper and say, 'This is what I want it to sound like'."

"I went up to his house in LA a couple of times. One of the houses he owns is in 'Lost Highway'. He said, 'Let me show you this', and walked up the side of a hill. He showed me a trail of ants crawling over a piece of rotting meat on a canvas, and told me that was his latest project. That might make him sound like a pretentious cock, but he's not at all. He's like your uncle. I found myself looking at him, going, 'Jesus Christ, David Lynch!'. I've probably seen 'Blue Velvet' about 50 times, y'know?! It was like, 'He's talking to me! He created Frank Booth!'."

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