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The correct unit of study is not the play it is the scene.
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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Scene
Study
Play
Unit
Units
More quotes by David Mamet
I'm not the guy to ask about politics. I'm a gag writer.
David Mamet
Obama is a tyrant the same way FDR was a tyrant. He has a view of presidential power that states: the government is in control of the country, and the president is in charge of the government. He's taken an imperial view of the presidency.
David Mamet
People ask me, 'What do you do?' And I tell them I'm a writer, but always with the silent reservation, 'I am, of course, not really a writer. Hemingway was a writer.'
David Mamet
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
If, indeed, a firearm were more dangerous to its possessors than to potential aggressors, would it not make sense for the government to arm all criminals, and let them accidentally shoot themselves? Is this absurd? Yes, and yet the government, of course, is arming criminals.
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
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.
David Mamet
I like Bach. I like Randy Newman.
David Mamet
Characters on stage, like people in what we refer to as real life, do not speak to reveal themselves. They do not speak to conceal themselves. They speak to get whatever it is that they want. It is the only reason they speak.
David Mamet
It's upsetting to be a man in our society.
David Mamet
IF YOU PRETEND THE CHARACTERS CANT SPEAK, AND WRITE A SILENT MOVIE, YOU WILL BE WRITING GREAT DRAMA.
David Mamet
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.
David Mamet
My tendency as an actor was to correct people, was to say, 'What if we tried it this way, what about if we tried that way?' That's terrible habit for an actor, but that's a good habit for director. So I became a director.
David Mamet
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
The main question in drama, the way I was taught, is always, 'What does the protagonist want?' That's what drama is. It comes down to that. It's not about theme, it's not about ideas, it's not about setting, but what the protagonist wants.
David Mamet
Encounter: Doubt, Shame, Humiliation. It will finally be worth it. Acting is more about courage than anything else.
David Mamet
Blasphemy and prayer are one. Both assert the existence of a superior power. The first, however, with conviction.
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
Always tell the truth - it's the easiest thing to remember.
David Mamet
Welcome to Chicago. This town stinks like a whorehouse at low tide.
David Mamet
