David Mamet Quotes

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David Mamet

Profession : Dramatist

Birth : November 30, 1947

I hate vacations. There's nothing to do.

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

We respond to a drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dreamlife.

David Mamet

The product of the artist has become less important than the fact of the artist. We wish to absorb this person. We wish to devour someone who has experienced the tragic. In our society this person is much more important than anything he might create.

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

Every reiteration of the idea that nothing matters debases the human spirit.

David Mamet

When I started out I was a failed actor.

David Mamet

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.

David Mamet

It's upsetting to be a man in our society.

David Mamet

Mixed martial arts was invented by Brazilians, whose families had been trained by the Japanese. Those Brazilians came to the U.S., where their invention was bought out, gussied up and presented to the world, which found it good.

David Mamet

In practice we, in the world, must do business with each other.

David Mamet

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.

David Mamet

The basis of drama is... the struggle of the hero towards a specific goal at the end of which he realises that what kept him from it was, in the lesser drama, civilisation and, in the great drama, the discovery of something that he did not set out to discover but which can be seen retrospectively as inevitable.

David Mamet

I love the British.

David Mamet

I'm not the guy to ask about politics. I'm a gag writer.

David Mamet

I won't ever do e-mail.

David Mamet

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

I used to think I'd like to be a fireman - in fact, I still would - and the only drawback I could see was coming back to the firehouse, after a day of fighting fires, and still having to put in an eight-hour day writing.

David Mamet

I've been alienating my public since I was 20 years old.

David Mamet

It's hard to write a good plot, it's very hard.

David Mamet