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People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.
David Mamet -
In Chicago, we love our crooks!
David Mamet
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Yes, well that's very cute, but you're running this office like a bunch of bullshit.
David Mamet -
One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work; one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. 'One-size-fits-all,' and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is 'slavery.'
David Mamet -
I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly. I get up early in the morning and go to work. I love to write.
David Mamet -
I've always been more comfortable sinking while clutching a good theory than swimming with an ugly fact.
David Mamet -
There's no such thing as talent; you just have to work hard enough.
David Mamet -
You ever take a dump, made you feel you'd just slept for twelve hours?
David Mamet
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People ask me, 'What do you do?' And I tell them I'm a writer, but always with the silent reservation, 'I am, of course, not really a writer. Hemingway was a writer.'
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 -
I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly.
David Mamet -
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 -
In a world we find terrifying, we ratify that which doesn't threaten us.
David Mamet -
I always thought the real violence in Hollywood isn't what's on the screen. It's what you have to do to raise the money.
David Mamet
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There's nothing in the world more silent than the telephone the morning after everybody pans your play. It won't ring from room service; your mother won't be calling you. If the phone has not rung by 8 in the morning, you're dead.
David Mamet -
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 -
A stage play is basically a form of uber-schizophrenia. You split yourself into two minds - one being the protagonist and the other being the antagonist. The playwright also splits himself into two other minds: the mind of the writer and the mind of the audience.
David Mamet -
Culture exists and evolves to relegate to habit categories of interactions the constant conscious reference to which would make human interaction impossible.
David Mamet -
April to September it's me, it's no fucking Moss! Due respect... he's an order taker. Talks... oh, talks a good game. But look at the board, and it's me John. It's me.
David Mamet -
The quality I most admire in a man is steadfastness.
David Mamet
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Liberalism is a religion. Its tenets cannot be proved, its capacity for waste and destruction demonstrated. But it affords a feeling of spiritual rectitude at little or no cost.
David Mamet -
It's hard to write a good play because it's hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience.
David Mamet -
I'm not the guy to ask about politics. I'm a gag writer.
David Mamet -
In practice we, in the world, must do business with each other.
David Mamet