David Mamet Quotes
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I've always been more comfortable sinking while clutching a good theory than swimming with an ugly fact.
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The government, for example, has determined that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people, and, so, must be given certain preferences. Anyone acquainted with both black and white people knows this assessment is not only absurd but monstrous. And yet it is the law.
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War is tragedy. The great war stories are tragedies. It's the failure of diplomacy. 'War and Peace,' 'A Farewell to Arms,' 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' Those are some of the greatest tragedies.
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Our job, as writers is to do our jobs.
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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.
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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.
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People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.
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There is a profound and ineradicable taint of antisemitism in the British.
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The liberals in my neighbourhood wouldn't give away Brentwood to the Palestinians, but they want to give away Tel Aviv.
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When we leave the play saying how spectacular the sets or costumes were, or how interesting the ideas, it means we had a bad time.
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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.
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I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.
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There's no such thing as talent; you just have to work hard enough.
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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.
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Before you can steal fire from the Gods you gotta be able to get coffee for the director
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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.'
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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.'
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The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong; that the bumblebee can fly; that, perhaps, one should never trust an expert; that there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of by those with an academic bent.
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We respond to a drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dreamlife.
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I grew up in a tough neighborhood and we used to say you can get further with a kind word and a gun than just a kind word.
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It's hard for a Jew of my generation, an American Jew, who is philo-Zionistic, not to romanticize Israel.
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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.
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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.
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I'm not the guy to ask about politics. I'm a gag writer.