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It is the writer’s job to make the play interesting. It is the actor’s job to make the performance truthful.
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
Interesting
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Play
Truthful
Make
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Performances
Actor
Writer
More quotes by David Mamet
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
The terror and beauty of the dream come from the connection of previously unrelated mundanities of life.
David Mamet
Many players will not improve because they cannot bear self-knowledge.
David Mamet
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
The mind is a mill which can incessant turn, 'til its mere operation focus the stress inward and the stones grind themselves to dust.
David Mamet
In a restaurant one is both observed and unobserved. Joy and sorrow can be displayed and observed unwittingly, the writer scowling naively and the diners wondering, What the hell is he doing?
David Mamet
I love all insider memoirs. It doesn't matter whether it's truck-drivers or doctors. I think everybody likes to go backstage, find out what people think and what they talk about and what specialised job they have.
David Mamet
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.
David Mamet
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
I didn't knowingly meet a conservative until, to my shame, I was 60 years old and sat down and said, 'Wow, I don't understand what this guy's talking about, but he has a great civility about him. Perhaps I better investigate this thing.'
David Mamet
The avant-garde is to the left what jingoism is to the right. Both are a refuge in nonsense.
David Mamet
Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it isn't fun. It's entertainment.
David Mamet
Welcome to Chicago. This town stinks like a whorehouse at low tide.
David Mamet
My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library.
David Mamet
The greater the intellect, the more ease in its misdirection.
David Mamet
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
You can't rely on the acting to tell the story.
David Mamet
In practice we, in the world, must do business with each other.
David Mamet
We all hope. It's what keeps us alive.
David Mamet
What I value most in my friends is loyalty.
David Mamet
