Quotes by David Mamet

Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: its full of surprises, and youre constantly getting fucked.

Every reiteration of the idea that _nothing matters_ debases the human spirit.Every reiteration of the idea that there is no drama in modern life, there is only dramatization, that there is no tragedy, there is only unexplained misfortune, debases us. It denies what we know to be true. In denying what we know, we are as a nation which cannot remember its dreams--like an unhappy person who cannot remember his dreams and so denies that he does dream, and denies that there are such things as dreams.

The basis of drama is ... is the struggle of the hero towards a specific goal at the end of which he realizes that what kept him from it was, in the lesser drama, civilization 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. The example Aristotle uses, of course, is Oedipus.

We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.

...My dad, may he rest in peace, taught me many wonderful things. And one of the things he taught me was never ask a guy what you do for a living. He said If you think about it, when you ask a guy, what do you do you do for a living, you’re saying how may I gauge the rest of your utterances. are you smarter than I am? Are you richer than I am, poorer than I am? So you ask a guy what do you do for a living, it’s the same thing as asking a guy, let me know what your politics are before I listen to you so I know whether or not you’re part of my herd, in which case I can nod knowingly, or part of the other herd, in which case I can wish you dead.

Put. That coffee. Down. Coffees for closers only.

My Alma mater is the Chicago Public Library.

War is tragedy. The great war stories are tragedies. Its the failure of diplomacy. War and Peace, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Those are some of the greatest tragedies.

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.

Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance.

Im 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.

Theres nothing in the world more silent than the telephone the morning after everybody pans your play. It wont ring from room service; your mother wont be calling you. If the phone has not rung by 8 in the morning, youre dead.

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.

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.

My greatest fear is that the audience will beat me to the punch line.

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.

You cant write about history without writing about politics at some point. History is about movements of people. What is criminality and what is government is a theme that runs through every history.

Conservatives believe in smaller government and in the power of the electorate. So I think that were less likely to try to use a dramatic forum to warp peoples political views.

When the three branches of government have failed to represent the citizenry and the mass of the media has failed to represent the citizenry, then the citizenry better represent the citizenry.

A play is basically a long, formalistic polemic. You can write it without the poetry, and if you do, you may have a pretty good play. We know this because we see plays in translation. Not many people speak Norwegian or Danish or whatever guys like Ibsen spoke, or Russian - yet we understand Chekhov and the others.