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A dramatic experience concerned with the mundane may inform but it cannot release and one concerned essentially with the aesthetic politics of its creators may divert or anger, but it cannot enlighten.

David Mamet

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David Mamet
Age: 77
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
Enlighten
Cannot
Release
Inform
May
Theatre
Creators
Creator
Anger
Enlightening
Theater
Mundane
Concerned
Aesthetic
Politics
Essentially
Divert
Experience
Dramatic

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Our job, as writers is to do our jobs.
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Make the audience wonder what's going on by putting them in the same position as the protagonist.
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We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.
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The audience requires not information but drama.
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You don't know what life is. You know nothing.
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Writing a novel is an incredibly free experience. One puts one's self in a narrative mode. You can go off in any direction - the past, the future, or go laterally, or include one's own beliefs. It's total freedom.
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The greater the intellect, the more ease in its misdirection.
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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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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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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.
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The work of the director is the work of constructing the shot list from the script.
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Being a writer in Hollywood is like going to Hitler's Eagle Nest with a great idea for a bar mitzvah.
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When you come into the theatre, you have to be willing to say, 'We're all here to undergo a communion, to find out what the hell is going on in this world.' If you're not willing to say that, what you get is entertainment instead of art, and poor entertainment at that.
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The study of acting consists in the main of getting out of one’s own way, and in learning to deal with uncertainty and being comfortable being uncomfortable.
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You get rich through luck. You get rich through crime. You get rich through fulfilling the needs of another. You can be as greedy as you like. If you can’t do one of those three things, you ain’t going to get any money.
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Here is a sovereign talisman against regret: never do that which might engender it.
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I'm entitled to my political opinions, and I get to vote because I'm an American.
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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.
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We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.
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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.
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