David Mamet Quotes

Take away the director from the staged play and what do you get? Usually a diminution of strife, a shorter rehearsal period and a better production.

I`ve always been more comfortable sinking while clutching a good theory than swimming with an ugly fact.

The surprise is half the battle. Many things are half the battle, losing is half the battle. Let`s think about what`s the whole battle.

I`d observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money; but that nonetheless people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day in rather wonderful and privileged circumstances. We are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired - in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the constitution.

Hollywood is like cocaine. You cannot understand its attraction until you are doing it. And when you are doing it, you are insane.

The product of the artist has become less important than the fact of the artist. We wish to absorb this person. We wish to devour someone who has experienced the tragic. In our society this person is much more important than anything he might create.

(to acting students at Atlantic Theater Company)Invent nothing, deny nothing.

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.

Asperger`s syndrome helped make the movies. The symptoms of this developmental disorder include early precocity, a great ability to maintain masses of information, a lack of ability to mix with groups in age-appropriate aways, ignorance of or indifference to social norms, high intelligence, and difficulty with transitions married to a preternatural ability to concentrate on the minutiae of the task at hand. This sounds to me like a job description for a movie director.

I always thought the real violence in Hollywood isn`t what`s on the screen. It`s what you have to do to raise the money.

(when asked if he wished he had a different profession) Oh, all writers wish that. That`s why we become writers. We want to do something active but we can`t. Paul Johnson, in his "History of the 20th Century", says all the great crimes are committed by intellectuals. He says intellectuals love power and we get tired of sitting on our asses.

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."

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

(when asked to comment on adapting his own work for the screen) It`s like raping your children to teach them about sex.

In a world we find terrifying, we ratify that which doesn`t threaten us.

Before the US (2006) mid-term elections, my rabbi was taking a lot of flak. The congregation is exclusive-liberal, yet he is a self-described independent (read "conservative") and he was driving the flock wild. Why? Because a) he never discussed politics; and b) he taught that the quality of political discourse must be addressed first; that Jewish law teaches that it is incumbent upon one to hear the other fellow out. `So I, like many of the liberal congregation, began - teeth grinding - to attempt to do so. And in doing so I recognised that I held two views of America. `One was of a state where everything was magically wrong and must be immediately corrected at any cost; and the other (the world in which I actually functioned day to day) was made up of people who were in the main reasonably trying to maximise their comfort by getting along with one another (in the workplace, the marketplace, the jury room, even the school meeting). `And I realised that the time had come for me to avow my participation in the country in which I chose to live - and that this country was not a schoolroom teaching values, but a marketplace.

There`s no such thing as talent; you just have to work hard enough.

I have to admit that I don`t like Disneyland.

Every reiteration of the idea that nothing matters debases the human spirit.

Thank God Hollywood people don`t have souls so they don`t have to suffer through their lives.

As a child of the 1960s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, business is exploitable and people are generally good at heart. But these cherished precepts, I realised, had over the years become increasingly impracticable prejudices.

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

I grew up in a tough neighborhood and we used to say you can get further with a kind word and a gun than just a kind word.

It`s only words... unless they`re true.

We respond to a drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dreamlife.

Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.

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

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

I hate vacations. There`s nothing to do.

In a world we find terrifying, we ratify that which doesn`t threaten us.

The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong; that the bumblebee can fly; that, perhaps, one should never trust an expert; that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by those with an academic bent.

Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills.

Hollywood is capitalism at its best: opposing forces working it out, using tools of the marketplace. As such, it`s vastly messier than totalitarianism, but it kills a lot less people.