David Mamet Quotes

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

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Quotes to Explore

• I've had a pretty charmed life, so there's nothing that I need to take too seriously right now.

  

  Larisa Oleynik
  • Life
  • Pretty
  • Now

• You do not need to have a 2,400-page bill come out of Washington, D.C.

  

  Carly Fiorina
  • You
  • Need
  • Washington

• All the time I was writing hit songs with my partner David Porter, I always had the yen to perform. Sure did. And when the opportunity came, I took it. The first album, 'Presenting Isaac Hayes,' didn't do so hot, but it was like a prelude for what was to come.

  

  Isaac Hayes
  • Time
  • Writing
  • Opportunity

• As soon as street art got popular, I was just like, 'I'm out of here.'

  

  Barry McGee
  • Art
  • Popular
  • Just

• The one thing that you simply have to remember all the time that you are there, is that Hollywood is an oriental city. As long as you do that you might survive. If you try to equate it with anything else you'll perish.

  

  Olivia De Havilland
  • Time
  • Long
  • Remember

• I'd been going to the Louvre since 1951. I thought I knew Paris and the French, but I didn't really. You know how easy it is to make friends when you are traveling. People are curious about you, you are curious about them. But you never really make friends that way. After the Louvre, I discovered that I have friends now because I have enemies.

  

  I. M. Pei
  • People
  • Friends
  • Thought

• As an artist, you're always going to be yearning and wanting and never satisfied. I never feel like I've really achieved something.

  

  Parker Posey
  • You
  • Like
  • Artist

• My childhood was great because my family has an amazing sense of humor, and it was just all making videos and jokes and doing skits and things.

  

  Zach Anner
  • Great
  • Family
  • Amazing

• Love is reaching out to try to get to the other person.

  

  Gary Chapman
  • Love
  • Person
  • Reaching

• I grew up in Decatur, Georgia. We had three boys in the household; actually, it felt like four of us. My pops sort of raised my uncle, too. So, it was four boys and, later, a younger sister.

  

  Omari Hardwick
  • Up
  • Sister
  • Three

• I wanted to write a novel that would make others feel the history: the pain and fear that black people have had to live through in order to endure.

  

  Octavia E. Butler
  • People
  • Live
  • History

• Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.

  

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
  • World
  • Reality
  • Imagination

• I just wanna be a good artist.

  

  Kat Graham
  • Good
  • Artist
  • Just

• My family didn't like me going on the stage, and they didn't much like my being a writer, either.

  

  P. L. Travers
  • Family
  • Like
  • Stage

• None of us had any idea of how successful Downton was going to be. I thought I was signing up for another period drama that had a slightly modern feel. It had a freedom about it because it was coming out of the head of Julian Fellowes. Anything could happen and generally did.

  

  Dan Stevens
  • Up
  • Freedom
  • Thought

• There is no doubt that the way journalism worked when I was growing up and getting started has changed forever.

  

  Dan Rather
  • Up
  • Growing
  • Forever

• Be bored and see where it takes you, because the imagination's dusty wilderness is worth crossing if you want to sculpt your soul.

  

  Nancy Gibbs
  • Soul
  • Want
  • Imagination

• 'The Ballad of Black Tom' was written, in part, during the latest round of arguments about H. P. Lovecraft's legacy as both a great writer and a prejudiced man. I grew up worshipping the guy, so this issue felt quite personal to me.

  

  Victor LaValle
  • Up
  • Great
  • Guy

• There are Tea Parties, and I would say plural, in California.

  

  Carly Fiorina
  • California
  • Say
  • Tea

• When I was 18 I was just absorbing everything around me: whatever happens, happens. I was so naive and willing to ride whatever wave life threw at me.

  

  Paul Wesley
  • Life

• If I were God - and I never understand why I'm not - I should say, "Shop around, I don't think you'll find a better bargain than here."

  

  Quentin Crisp
  • God
  • Why

• If you assume continuity, you can open the well-stocked mathematical toolkit of continuous functions and differential equations, the saws and hammers of engineering and physics for the past two centuries (and the foreseeable future).

  

  Benoit Mandelbrot
  • Nature
  • Future
  • Science

• I want the music to be heard as close to when I made it, as much as possible. I don't want to get into some "future of the music industry" thing, or where I stand on digital this or that, but I think it's ridiculous that a lot of people in the industry plan so far ahead that it makes a lot of improvisation impossible and makes a lot of people's expectations fixed and not fluid.

  

  Bradford Cox
  • Music
  • Expectations
  • Improvisation

• 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