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If you're writing an opinion piece, it's your job to write your opinion. If, on the other hand, you wrote a novel, as Virginia Woolf tells us, it would be inappropriate if you let your novel be influenced by your political opinions.

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
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Opinions
Write
Tells
Political
Wrote
Hands
Piece
Writing
Novel
Woolf
Would
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Inappropriate
Hand
Virginia
Opinion
Influenced

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The pursuit of Fashion is the attempt of the middle class to co-opt tragedy. In adopting the clothing, speech, and personal habits of those in straitened, dangerous, or pitiful circumstances, the middle class seeks to have what it feels to be the exigent and nonequivocal experiences had by those it emulates.
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The great movie can be as free of being a record of the progress of the protagonist as is a dream.
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I've been alienating my public since I was 20 years old. When 'American Buffalo' came out on Broadway, people would storm out and say, 'How dare he use that kind of language!' Of course I'm alienating the public! That's what they pay me for.
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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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People only speak to get something.
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Like Lincoln said: If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong, and I feel the same way about the leftist dismantling of the West. If that's not wrong, then nothing is wrong.
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I'm not the guy to ask about politics. I'm a gag writer.
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The greater the intellect, the more ease in its misdirection.
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Encounter: Doubt, Shame, Humiliation. It will finally be worth it. Acting is more about courage than anything else.
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Every scene should be able to answer three questions: Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?
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I've been alienating my public since I was 20 years old.
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I pray you indulge me for a space, for I am going to set out on a speech which may have some duration, but whose theme may be gleaned from its opening phrase: how dare you.
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I understand that computers, which I once believed to be but a hermaphrodite typewriter-cum-filing cabinet, offer the cyber literate increased ability to communicate. I do not think this is altogether a bad thing, however it may appear on the surface.
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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.
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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.
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Always tell the truth - it's the easiest thing to remember.
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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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IF YOU PRETEND THE CHARACTERS CANT SPEAK, AND WRITE A SILENT MOVIE, YOU WILL BE WRITING GREAT DRAMA.
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The secret knowledge is there's nobody home but us chickens. The Constitution was written by a bunch of regular guys who tried to get together and thrash out a contract under which they could get together that would keep people together.
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