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Listen, here's the thing about an English degree - if you sat somebody down and asked them to make a list of the writers they admire over the last hundred years, see how many of them got a degree in English.

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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More quotes by David Mamet

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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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What I value most in my friends is loyalty.
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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?'
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What we're trying to do is find two or more shots the juxtaposition of which will give us the idea.
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It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
David Mamet
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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.
David Mamet
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It's hard for a Jew of my generation, an American Jew, who is philo-Zionistic, not to romanticize Israel.
David Mamet
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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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My idea of perfect happiness is a healthy family, peace between nations, and all the critics die.
David Mamet
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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
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Many players will not improve because they cannot bear self-knowledge.
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.
David Mamet
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You don't know what life is. You know nothing.
David Mamet
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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?
David Mamet
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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
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Encounter: Doubt, Shame, Humiliation. It will finally be worth it. Acting is more about courage than anything else.
David Mamet