David Mamet Quotes

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David Mamet

Profession : Dramatist

Birth : November 30, 1947

It's hard for a Jew of my generation, an American Jew, who is philo-Zionistic, not to romanticize Israel.

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

There's something in me that just wants to create dialogue.

David Mamet

People only speak to get something.

David Mamet

I've always been fascinated by the picaresque.

David Mamet

Listen, here's the thing about an English degree - if you sat somebody down and asked them to make a list of the writers they admire over the last hundred years, see how many of them got a degree in English.

David Mamet

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

If you're writing an opinion piece, it's your job to write your opinion. If, on the other hand, you wrote a novel, as Virginia Woolf tells us, it would be inappropriate if you let your novel be influenced by your political opinions.

David Mamet

I was fortunate enough to have a rambling youth.

David Mamet

The essence of jiu-jitsu is philosophy.

David Mamet

In Chicago, we love our crooks!

David Mamet

Movies were never an art form, they were entertainment. It just evolved into an art form from there, and it's still evolving in different ways.

David Mamet

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.

David Mamet

I don't think there's any information to be gotten from television.

David Mamet

In my family, in the days prior to television, we liked to while away the evenings by making ourselves miserable, solely based on our ability to speak the language viciously.

David Mamet

I love all insider memoirs. It doesn't matter whether it's truck-drivers or doctors. I think everybody likes to go backstage, find out what people think and what they talk about and what specialised job they have.

David Mamet

The so-called assault weapons ban is a hoax. It is a political appeal to the ignorant. The guns it supposedly banned have been illegal for 78 years. Did the ban make them 'more' illegal? The ban addresses only the appearance of weapons, not their operation.

David Mamet

President Obama seems to understand the Constitution as a 'set of suggestions.'

David Mamet

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.

David Mamet

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.

David Mamet