David Mamet Quotes
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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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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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Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills.
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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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There's no such thing as talent; you just have to work hard enough.
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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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I hate vacations. There's nothing to do.
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You ever take a dump, made you feel you'd just slept for twelve hours?
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Our job, as writers is to do our jobs.
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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 for a Jew of my generation, an American Jew, who is philo-Zionistic, not to romanticize Israel.
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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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In Chicago, we love our crooks!
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There is a profound and ineradicable taint of antisemitism in the British.
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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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We respond to a drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dreamlife.
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I understand that computers, which I once believed to be but a hermaphrodite typewriter-cum-filing cabinet, offer the cyber literate increased ability to communicate. I do not think this is altogether a bad thing, however it may appear on the surface.
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My dad was a labour lawyer, and the ideas that I grew up with - bad management, bad capitalism, robber barons - when I applied this to my own life, I saw that we are all on both sides of the coin.
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The Founders recognized that Government is quite literally a necessary evil, that there must be opposition, between its various branches, and between political parties, for these are the only ways to temper the individual's greed for power and the electorates' desires for peace by submission to coercion or blandishment.
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I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.
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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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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.
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I won't ever do e-mail.
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American football seems to resemble soccer in that one scores by putting the ball through the opponent's goal; but football, truly is about land. The Settlers want to move the line of scrimmage Westward, the Native Americans want to move it East.