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

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In my family, in the days prior to television, we liked to while away the evenings by making ourselves miserable, solely based on our ability to speak the language viciously.
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One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. 'One-size-fits-all,' and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is 'slavery.'
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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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The purpose of technique is to free the unconscious. If you follow the rules ploddingly, they will allow your unconscious to be free.
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Opportunity may knock, but it seldom nags.
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We all hope. It's what keeps us alive.
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I've always been fascinated by the picaresque.
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Fun is what you do for yourself. If somebody else does it, it's entertainment.
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Here's what happens in a play. You get involved in a situation where something is unbalanced. If nothing's unbalanced, there's no reason to have a play. If Hamlet comes home from school, and his dad's not dead and asks him if he's had a good time, it's boring. But if something's unbalanced, it must be returned to order.
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I tend to write a lot, which I think is the secret to being prolific.
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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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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.
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The work of the director is the work of constructing the shot list from the script.
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What I value most in my friends is loyalty.
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I grew up in a tough neighborhood and we used to say you can get further with a kind word and a gun than just a kind word.
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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'm not the guy to ask about politics. I'm a gag writer.
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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.
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Before you can steal fire from the Gods you gotta be able to get coffee for the director.
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Always tell the truth - it's the easiest thing to remember.
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