“Writers are asked, 'How could you know so much about [fill in the profession]?' The answer, if the writing satisfies, is that… — 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
Being a writer in Hollywood is like going to Hitler's Eagle Nest with a great idea for a bar mitzvah. — David Mamet Copy Share Image
The audience will teach you how to act and the audience will teach you how to write and to direct. The classroom… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
Writing a novel is an incredibly free experience. One puts one's self in a narrative mode. You can go off in any… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
IF YOU PRETEND THE CHARACTERS CANT SPEAK, AND WRITE A SILENT MOVIE, YOU WILL BE WRITING GREAT DRAMA. — David Mamet Copy Share Image
I used to think I'd like to be a fireman - in fact, I still would - and the only drawback I… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
People ask me, 'What do you do?' And I tell them I'm a writer, but always with the silent reservation, 'I am,… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
A good writer gets better only by learning to cut, to remove the ornamental, the descriptive, the narrative, and especially the deeply… — 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
The subject of drama is The Lie. At the end of the drama THE TRUTH -- which has been overlooked, disregarded, scorned,… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
In a restaurant one is both observed and unobserved. Joy and sorrow can be displayed and observed "unwittingly," the writer scowling naively… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
Don't write stage directions. If it is not apparent what the character is trying to accomplish by saying the line, tell us… — 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
If you're writing an opinion piece, it's your job to write your opinion. If, on the other hand, you wrote a novel,… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
“And there are plays – and books and songs and poems and dances – that are perhaps upsetting or intricate or unusual,… — David Mamet Copy Share Image
You can't write about history without writing about politics at some point. History is about movements of people. 'What is criminality and… — 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
Any time two characters are talking about a third, the scene is a crock of s***. — 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
