When we leave the play saying how spectacular the sets or costumes were, or how interesting the ideas, it means we had… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
In playwriting, you've got to be able to write dialogue. And if you write enough of it and let it flow enough,… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
There's nothing in the world more silent than the telephone the morning after everybody pans your play. It won't ring from room… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
“All drama is about lies. All drama is about something that’s hidden. A drama starts because a situation becomes imbalanced by a… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
A play is basically a long, formalistic polemic. You can write it without the poetry, and if you do, you may have… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
A stage play is basically a form of uber-schizophrenia. You split yourself into two minds - one being the protagonist and the… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
Anyone can write five people trapped in a snowstorm. The question is how you get them into the snowstorm. It's hard to… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
Here's what happens in a play. You get involved in a situation where something is unbalanced. If nothing's unbalanced, there's no reason… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
The most charming of theories holds that someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays -- that he was of too low a… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
If you're neurotic and you think, I'm not where I deserve to be or my mother didn't love me, or blah, blah,… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
Freud believed that our dreams sometimes recapitulate a speech, a comment we've heard or something that we've read. I always had compositions… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
It's hard to write a good play because it's hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
It is the writer’s job to make the play interesting. It is the actor’s job to make the performance truthful. — David Mamet Copy Share Image
If, indeed, a firearm were more dangerous to its possessors than to potential aggressors, would it not make sense for the government to arm… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
Culture exists and evolves to relegate to habit categories of interactions the constant conscious reference to which would make human interaction impossible. — David Mamet Copy Share Image
“We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills. — David Mamet Copy Share Image
The Oscars demonstrate the will of the people to control and judge those they have elected to stand above them (much, perhaps, as in… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
I know very well what it is to be out of work and to be cheated by employers and I know what it is… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
Hitchcock denigrated American films, saying they were all 'pictures of people talking' - as, indeed, most of them are. — David Mamet Copy Share Image
“Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it's full of surprises, and you're constantly getting fucked.” — David Mamet Copy Share Image
A dramatic experience concerned with the mundane may inform but it cannot release; and one concerned essentially with the aesthetic politics of its creators… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
