David Mamet Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• We cannot live without trade. A society can neither advance nor improve without excess of disposable income. This excess can only be amassed through the production of goods and services necessary or attractive to the mass. A financial system which allows this leads to inequality; one that does not leads to mass starvation.

  David Mamet

  Excess, Doe, Income

  David Mamet (2011). “The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture”, p.8, Penguin

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• If the scene bores you when you read it, rest assured it WILL bore the actors, and will then bore the audience, and we're all going to be back in the breadline.

  David Mamet

  Bores You, Actors, Scene

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• The true writer must write not the acceptable but the true.

  David Mamet

  Writing, Acceptable

  David Mamet (2008). “Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business”, p.72, Vintage

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• The Founders recognized that Government is quite literally a necessary evil, that there must be opposition, between its various branches, and between political parties, for these are the only ways to temper the individual's greed for power and the electorates' desires for peace by submission to coercion or blandishment.

  David Mamet

  Party, Government, Evil

  "Hands Off Our Guns" by David Mamet, www.realclearpolitics.com. January 28, 2013.

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• As long as the protagonist wants something, the audience will want something.

  David Mamet

  Want Something, Long, Protagonists

  David Mamet (1991). “On Directing Film”, Penguin Group USA

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• The purpose of technique is to free the unconscious. If you follow the rules ploddingly, they will allow your unconscious to be free.

  David Mamet

  Technique, Purpose, Unconscious

  David Mamet (1991). “On Directing Film”, Penguin Group USA

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• Get into the scene late; get out of the scene early.

  David Mamet

  Writing, Scene, Late

  David Mamet (1991). “On Directing Film”, Penguin Group USA

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• If, indeed, a firearm were more dangerous to its possessors than to potential aggressors, would it not make sense for the government to arm all criminals, and let them accidentally shoot themselves? Is this absurd? Yes, and yet the government, of course, is arming criminals.

  David Mamet

  Government, Arms, Criminals

  "David Mamet’s Newsweek Eruption: Another Reason We Need Solid Reporting on Guns" by Paul Raeburn, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 3, 2013.

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• The so-called assault weapons ban is a hoax. It is a political appeal to the ignorant. The guns it supposedly banned have been illegal for 78 years. Did the ban make them 'more' illegal? The ban addresses only the appearance of weapons, not their operation.

  David Mamet

  Gun, Years, Assault Weapons

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• Before you can steal fire from the Gods you gotta be able to get coffee for the director.

  David Mamet

  Coffee, Fire, Directors

  "Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business". Book by David Mamet, February 2007.

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• Always tell the truth - it's the easiest thing to remember.

  David Mamet

  Truth, Fortune Cookie, Remember

  David Mamet (2016). “Mamet Plays: 3: Glengarry Glen Ross; Prairie du Chien; The Shawl; Speed-the-Plow”, p.36, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• If you're neurotic and you think, I'm not where I deserve to be or my mother didn't love me, or blah, blah, blah, that lie, that neurotic vision, takes over your life and you're plagued by it 'til it's cleansed. In a play, at the end of the play, the lie is revealed. [T]he better the play is, the more surprising and inevitable the lie is, as Aristotle told us. Plays are about lies.

  David Mamet

  Mother, Lying, Thinking

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• The honest man might observe... that no one gets something for nothing; that politicians go in poor and go out rich; that the Government screws up everything it touches; and that the Will to Believe is best confined to the Religious Venue, as to practice it elsewhere is just too damned expensive.

  David Mamet

  Religious, Believe, Men

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• There's nothing in the world more silent than the telephone the morning after everybody pans your play. It won't ring from room service; your mother won't be calling you. If the phone has not rung by 8 in the morning, you're dead.

  David Mamet

  Mother, Morning, Phones

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• I love all insider memoirs. It doesn't matter whether it's truck-drivers or doctors. I think everybody likes to go backstage, find out what people think and what they talk about and what specialised job they have.

  David Mamet

  Jobs, Thinking, Doctors

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• I was fortunate enough to have a rambling youth.

  David Mamet

  Rambling, Youth, Enough

  "Q&A with film director David Mamet". SI.com Interview, www.si.com. April 8, 2008.

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• The realization that I came to is that each citizen for himself or herself understands the economics, which is, "I better make more than I spend and I better put something aside for a rainy day, and I want to get a good idea about what to do with the surplus so that perhaps it can grow while I'm sleeping." And that that's capitalism. Everybody practices it, but half of the country - those on the left - deny that it's true.

  David Mamet

  Country, Sleep, Rainy Day

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• A novel it's different. It's kind of exhilarating not to have to cut to the bone constantly. Oh, well I can go over here for a moment. I can say what I think the guy was thinking or what the day looked like or what the bird was doing. If you do that as a playwright, you're dead.

  David Mamet

  Cutting, Thinking, Guy

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• A play is basically a long, formalistic polemic. You can write it without the poetry, and if you do, you may have a pretty good play. We know this because we see plays in translation. Not many people speak Norwegian or Danish or whatever guys like Ibsen spoke, or Russian - yet we understand Chekhov and the others.

  David Mamet

  Writing, Play, Long

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• Obama is a tyrant the same way FDR was a tyrant. He has a view of presidential power that states: the government is in control of the country, and the president is in charge of the government. He's taken an imperial view of the presidency.

  David Mamet

  Country, Taken, Government

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• We recipients of the boon of liberty have always been ready, when faced with discomfort, to discard any and all first principles of liberty, and, further, to indict those who do not freely join with us in happily arrogating those principles.

  David Mamet

  Government, Liberty, Principles

  David Mamet (1986). “Writing in restaurants”, Viking Adult

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• We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is. It is not a protective monastery of aesthetic truth. It is a place where everything is incredibly expensive.

  David Mamet

  Hollywood, Sinkholes, Monasteries

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The audience perceives only what the actor wants to do to the other actor.

  David Mamet

  Actors, Want, Perceive

  David Mamet (2011). “True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor”, p.56, Vintage

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• Art is about the spontaneous connection of the artist to his own unconscious - about insight beyond reason. If his insight were reasonable, anyone could do it, but anyone cannot. Only few can, and they are called.

  David Mamet

  Art, Connections, Spontaneous

  David Mamet (2010). “Theatre”, p.91, Macmillan

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• The avant-garde is to the left what jingoism is to the right. Both are a refuge in nonsense.

  David Mamet

  Jingoism, Avant Garde, Nonsense

  David Mamet (2013). “Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama”, p.61, Vintage

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