Quote

I pray you indulge me for a space, for I am going to set out on a speech which may have some duration, but whose theme may be gleaned from its opening phrase: how dare you.

David Mamet

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Space
Phrases
May
Theme
Going
Opening
Pray
Dare
Gleaned
Praying
Duration
Speech
Indulge
Whose
Phrase

More quotes by David Mamet

Image
Based on a true story is a come-on, the aesthetic equivalent of no loan request refused. For, at best, the creator has fashioned a film based on his understanding of, interpretation of, and reduction of the report of an actual occurrence.
David Mamet
Image
Hitchcock denigrated American films, saying they were all 'pictures of people talking' - as, indeed, most of them are.
David Mamet
Image
I love working on a typewriter - the rhythm, the sound it's like playing the piano, which I do, too.
David Mamet
Image
Let the cut tell the story. Otherwise you have not got dramatic action, you've got narration.
David Mamet
Image
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.
David Mamet
Image
The great movie can be as free of being a record of the progress of the protagonist as is a dream.
David Mamet
Image
I don't have any experience with film schools. I suspect that they're useless, because I've had experience with drama schools, and have found them to be useless.
David Mamet
Image
Before you can steal fire from the Gods you gotta be able to get coffee for the director.
David Mamet
Image
Make the audience wonder what's going on by putting them in the same position as the protagonist.
David Mamet
Image
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
Image
I know very well what it is to be out of work and to be cheated by employers and I know what it is to be an employer.
David Mamet
Image
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.
David Mamet
Image
Blasphemy and prayer are one. Both assert the existence of a superior power. The first, however, with conviction.
David Mamet
Image
The Israelis would like to live in peace within their borders the Arabs would like to kill them all.
David Mamet
Image
What I value most in my friends is loyalty.
David Mamet
Image
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.
David Mamet
Image
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
Image
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.
David Mamet
Image
We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is. It is not a protective monastery of aesthetic truth. It is a place where everything is incredibly expensive.
David Mamet
Image
Storytelling is like sex. We all do it naturally. Some of us are better at it than others.
David Mamet