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Let the cut tell the story. Otherwise you have not got dramatic action, you've got narration.

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
Tell
Stories
Narration
Dramatic
Otherwise
Cutting
Story
Action

More quotes by David Mamet

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There is a profound and ineradicable taint of antisemitism in the British.
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People only speak to get something.
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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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My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library.
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Encounter: Doubt, Shame, Humiliation. It will finally be worth it. Acting is more about courage than anything else.
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The greater the intellect, the more ease in its misdirection.
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I hate vacations. There's nothing to do.
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When I started out I was a failed actor.
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Opportunity may knock, but it seldom nags.
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The subject of drama is The Lie. At the end of the drama THE TRUTH -- which has been overlooked, disregarded, scorned, and denied -- prevails. And that is how we know the Drama is done.
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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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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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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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Many players will not improve because they cannot bear self-knowledge.
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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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I'm greedy and ambitious like everybody else.
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I tend to write a lot, which I think is the secret to being prolific.
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We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law?s treatment.
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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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Every fear hides a wish.
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