David Mamet famous quotes

One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work; one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. 'One-size-fits-all,' and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is 'slavery.'
-- David Mamet

#Country #Adventure #Cities

Every scene should be able to answer three questions: "Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?
-- David Mamet

#Want #Able #Three

Marijuana, for example, won't help one determine the correct aspect ratio...
-- David Mamet

#Marijuana #Example #Ratios

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

We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.
-- David Mamet

#Stress #Food #Pie

A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.
-- David Mamet

#Movie #Able #Scripts

Society functions in a way much more interesting than the multiple-choice pattern we have been rewarded for succeeding at in school. Success in life comes not from the ability to choose between the four presented answers, but from the rather more difficult and painfully acquired ability to formulate the questions.
-- David Mamet

#School #Interesting #Choices

When the three branches of government have failed to represent the citizenry and the mass of the media has failed to represent the citizenry, then the citizenry better represent the citizenry.
-- David Mamet

#Government #Media #Three

Opportunity may knock, but it seldom nags.
-- David Mamet

#Opportunity #May

We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.
-- David Mamet

#Freedom #Media #Expression

Every fear hides a wish.
-- David Mamet

#Fear #Wish

You know, I once read an interesting book which said that, uh, most people lost in the wilds, they, they die of shame. Yeah, see, they die of shame. 'What did I do wrong? How could I have gotten myself into this?' And so they sit there and they... die. Because they didn't do the one thing that would save their lives. Thinking.
-- David Mamet

#Book #Thinking #Interesting

Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance.
-- David Mamet

#Age #Youth #Beats

The government, for example, has determined that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people, and, so, must be given certain preferences. Anyone acquainted with both black and white people knows this assessment is not only absurd but monstrous. And yet it is the law.
-- David Mamet

#Black And White #Government #Assessment

When we fear things I think that we wish for them ... every fear hides a wish
-- David Mamet

#Fear #Thinking #Wish

The basis of drama is... the struggle of the hero towards a specific goal at the end of which he realises that what kept him from it was, in the lesser drama, civilisation and, in the great drama, the discovery of something that he did not set out to discover but which can be seen retrospectively as inevitable.
-- David Mamet

#Drama #Hero #Struggle

I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly.
-- David Mamet

#Two #Lazy

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

#Actors #Scene #Bores

The study of acting consists in the main of getting out of one’s own way, and in learning to deal with uncertainty and being comfortable being uncomfortable.
-- David Mamet

#Acting #Way #Study

I look back on my liberal political beliefs with a sort of wonder - as another exercise in self-involvement - rewarding myself for some superiority I could not logically describe.
-- David Mamet

#Exercise #Self #Political

A dramatic experience concerned with the mundane may inform but it cannot release; and one concerned essentially with the aesthetic politics of its creators may divert or anger, but it cannot enlighten.
-- David Mamet

#Theatre #May #Enlightening

Anyone ever lost in the wild knows that nature wants you dead.
-- David Mamet

#Humor #Want #Lost

The terror and beauty of the dream come from the connection of previously unrelated mundanities of life.
-- David Mamet

#Dream #Connections #Terror

The dream and the film are the juxtaposition of images in order to answer a question.
-- David Mamet

#Dream #Order #Answers

Invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school.
-- David Mamet

#School #Speak #Deny

At the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre, Sanford Meisner said, 'When you go into the professional world, at a stock theatre somewhere, backstage, you will meet an older actor, someone who has been around awhile. He will tell you tales and anecdotes, about life in the theatre. He will speak to you about your performance and the performances of others, and he will generalize to you, based on his experience and his intuitions, about the laws of the stage. Ignore this man!'
-- David Mamet

#School #Men #Law

When you come into the theatre, you have to be willing to say, 'We're all here to undergo a communion, to find out what the hell is going on in this world.' If you're not willing to say that, what you get is entertainment instead of art, and poor entertainment at that.
-- David Mamet

#Art #Theatre #World

Acting is not a genteel profession. Actors used to be buried at a crossroads with a stake through the heart. Those people's performances so troubled the onlookers that they feared their ghosts. An awesome compliment. Those players moved the audience not such that they were admitted to a school, or received a complimentary review, but such that the audience feared for their soul. Now that seems to me something to aim for.
-- David Mamet

#Heart #School #Player

It is the writer’s job to make the play interesting. It is the actor’s job to make the performance truthful.
-- David Mamet

#Jobs #Play #Interesting

There's no such thing as talent; you just have to work hard enough.
-- David Mamet

#Hard Work #Talent #Enough

Get into the scene late; get out of the scene early.
-- David Mamet

#Writing #Scene

People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.
-- David Mamet

#Truth #Honesty #Mean

What I value most in my friends is loyalty.
-- David Mamet

#Loyalty #Values

Train yourself for a profession that does not exist.
-- David Mamet

#Doe #Profession #Train

Do not internalize the industrial model. You are not one of the myriad interchangeable pieces, but a unique human being, and if you've got something to say, say it, and think well of yourself while you're learning to say it better.
-- David Mamet

#Unique #Thinking #Pieces