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Blasphemy and prayer are one. Both assert the existence of a superior power. The first, however, with conviction.

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
Superiors
Conviction
However
Prayer
Existence
Power
Blasphemy
Firsts
Assert
First
Superior

More quotes by David Mamet

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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.
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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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One can read all one wants, and spend eternities in front of a blackboard with a tutor, but one is not going to learn to swim until one gets in the water.
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I tend to write a lot, which I think is the secret to being prolific.
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The secret knowledge is there's nobody home but us chickens. The Constitution was written by a bunch of regular guys who tried to get together and thrash out a contract under which they could get together that would keep people together.
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Our job, as writers is to do our jobs.
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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.
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Put. That coffee. Down. Coffee's for closers only.
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A novel it's different. It's kind of exhilarating not to have to cut to the bone constantly. Oh, well I can go over here for a moment. I can say what I think the guy was thinking or what the day looked like or what the bird was doing. If you do that as a playwright, you're dead.
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The greater the intellect, the more ease in its misdirection.
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If you find that a point cannot be made without narration, it is virtually certain that the point is unimportant to the story (which is to say, to the audience).
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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.
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Train yourself for a profession that does not exist.
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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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Welcome to Chicago. This town stinks like a whorehouse at low tide.
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Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it isn't fun. It's entertainment.
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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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It's upsetting to be a man in our society.
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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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Show business is and has always been a depraved carnival.
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