David Mamet Quotes
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We respond to a drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dreamlife.
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Culture exists and evolves to relegate to habit categories of interactions the constant conscious reference to which would make human interaction impossible.
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In a world we find terrifying, we ratify that which doesn't threaten us.
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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.
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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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I'm not the guy to ask about politics. I'm a gag writer.
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Each culture has its own form of staged combat, evolved from its particular method of street fighting and cleaned up for presentation as a spectacle, e.g. savate, Cornish wrestling, karate, kung-fu.
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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.
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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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I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly.
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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.
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The individual is not only best qualified to provide his own personal defense, he is the only one qualified to do so: and his right to do so is guaranteed by the Constitution.
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When I started out I was a failed actor.
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Cop couldn't find his fucking couch, the living room.
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I know very well what it is to be out of work and to be cheated by employers and I know what it is to be an employer.
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I won't ever do e-mail.
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A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.
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In practice we, in the world, must do business with each other.
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I was fortunate enough to have a rambling youth.
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Every reiteration of the idea that nothing matters debases the human spirit.
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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.
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I've always been fascinated by the picaresque.
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It's upsetting to be a man in our society.
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My tendency as an actor was to correct people, was to say, 'What if we tried it this way, what about if we tried that way?' That's terrible habit for an actor, but that's a good habit for director. So I became a director.