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You know, young actors say all the time, 'Should I use my own life experience?' And my response is, 'What choice do you have?'

David Mamet

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David Mamet
Age: 76
Born: 1947
Born: November 30
Actor
Author
Film Director
Film Producer
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Television Producer
Theatrical Director
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
David Alen Mamet
David Alan Mamet
Life
Response
Choice
Choices
Actors
Use
Experience
Young
Time

More quotes by David Mamet

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It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs.
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Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it's full of surprises, and you're constantly getting f***ed.
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American football seems to resemble soccer in that one scores by putting the ball through the opponent's goal but football, truly is about land. The Settlers want to move the line of scrimmage Westward, the Native Americans want to move it East.
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War is tragedy. The great war stories are tragedies. It's the failure of diplomacy. 'War and Peace,' 'A Farewell to Arms,' 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' Those are some of the greatest tragedies.
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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.
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The avant-garde is to the left what jingoism is to the right. Both are a refuge in nonsense.
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Opportunity may knock, but it seldom nags.
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A man stands alone at the plate. This is the time for what? For individual achievement. There he stands alone. But in the field, what? Part of a team.
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You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way! And that's how you get Capone.
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I tend to write a lot, which I think is the secret to being prolific.
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For it is written that just as it is forbidden to partake of the forbidden, it is forbidden not to partake of the permitted.
David Mamet
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The most charming of theories holds that someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays -- that he was of too low a state, and of insufficient education. But where in the wide history of the world do we find art created by the excessively wealthy, powerful, or educated?
David Mamet
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Always do things the least interesting way, the most blunt way, and you make a better movie. This is my experience.
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Don't write stage directions. If it is not apparent what the character is trying to accomplish by saying the line, tell us how the character said it or whether or not she moved to the couch isn't going to aid the case.
David Mamet
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We all hope. It's what keeps us alive.
David Mamet
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When I started out I was a failed actor.
David Mamet
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I don't have any experience with film schools. I suspect that they're useless, because I've had experience with drama schools, and have found them to be useless.
David Mamet
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My dad was a labour lawyer, and the ideas that I grew up with - bad management, bad capitalism, robber barons - when I applied this to my own life, I saw that we are all on both sides of the coin.
David Mamet
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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.
David Mamet
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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