Quote

When I started out I was a failed actor.

David Mamet

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Failed
Actor
Started
Actors

More quotes by 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
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
Image
Make the audience wonder what's going on by putting them in the same position as the protagonist.
David Mamet
Image
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
Image
We respond to a drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dream life.
David Mamet
Image
It's upsetting to be a man in our society.
David Mamet
Image
Opportunity may knock, but it seldom nags.
David Mamet
Image
Roll back the clock, and every possession of every great country started with a crime.
David Mamet
Image
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.
David Mamet
Image
The honest man might observe... that no one gets something for nothing that politicians go in poor and go out rich that the Government screws up everything it touches and that the Will to Believe is best confined to the Religious Venue, as to practice it elsewhere is just too damned expensive.
David Mamet
Image
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.
David Mamet
Image
Before you can steal fire from the Gods you gotta be able to get coffee for the director.
David Mamet
Image
Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.
David Mamet
Image
We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.
David Mamet
Image
The correct unit of study is not the play it is the scene.
David Mamet
Image
Any time two characters are talking about a third, the scene is a crock of s***.
David Mamet
Image
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
Image
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
Image
When the three branches of government have failed to represent the citizenry and the mass of the media has failed to represent the citizenry, then the citizenry better represent the citizenry.
David Mamet
Image
The audience requires not information but drama.
David Mamet