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My tendency as an actor was to correct people, was to say, 'What if we tried it this way, what about if we tried that way?' That's terrible habit for an actor, but that's a good habit for director. So I became a director.
David Mamet
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David Mamet
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: November 30
Actor
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Film Director
Film Producer
Novelist
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Screenwriter
Television Producer
Theatrical Director
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Chicago
Illinois
David Alen Mamet
David Alan Mamet
Way
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More quotes by David Mamet
I love all insider memoirs. It doesn't matter whether it's truck-drivers or doctors. I think everybody likes to go backstage, find out what people think and what they talk about and what specialised job they have.
David Mamet
Don't write stage directions. If it is not apparent what the character is trying to accomplish by saying the line, tell us how the character said it or whether or not she moved to the couch isn't going to aid the case.
David Mamet
Luck, if there is such a thing, is either going to favor everyone equally or going to exhibit a preference for the prepared.
David Mamet
My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library.
David Mamet
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.
David Mamet
A play is basically a long, formalistic polemic. You can write it without the poetry, and if you do, you may have a pretty good play. We know this because we see plays in translation. Not many people speak Norwegian or Danish or whatever guys like Ibsen spoke, or Russian - yet we understand Chekhov and the others.
David Mamet
The correct unit of study is not the play it is the scene.
David Mamet
Listen, here's the thing about an English degree - if you sat somebody down and asked them to make a list of the writers they admire over the last hundred years, see how many of them got a degree in English.
David Mamet
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.
David Mamet
I was fortunate enough to have a rambling youth.
David Mamet
It is the writer’s job to make the play interesting. It is the actor’s job to make the performance truthful.
David Mamet
Movies were never an art form, they were entertainment. It just evolved into an art form from there, and it's still evolving in different ways.
David Mamet
Opportunity may knock, but it seldom nags.
David Mamet
A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.
David Mamet
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.
David Mamet
To find beauty in the sad, hope in the midst of loss, and dignity in failure is great poetic art.
David Mamet
Storytelling is like sex. We all do it naturally. Some of us are better at it than others.
David Mamet
In a restaurant one is both observed and unobserved. Joy and sorrow can be displayed and observed unwittingly, the writer scowling naively and the diners wondering, What the hell is he doing?
David Mamet
I've been alienating my public since I was 20 years old. When 'American Buffalo' came out on Broadway, people would storm out and say, 'How dare he use that kind of language!' Of course I'm alienating the public! That's what they pay me for.
David Mamet
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.
David Mamet