David Mamet Quotes - Page 5

The avant-garde is to the left what jingoism is to the right. Both are a refuge in nonsense.

I love Superman. I'm a big fan of anyone who can make his living in his underwear.

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.

My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library.

Do not internalize the industrial model. You are not one of the myriad interchangeable pieces, but a unique human being, and if you've got something to say, say it, and think well of yourself while you're learning to say it better.

At the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre, Sanford Meisner said, 'When you go into the professional world, at a stock theatre somewhere, backstage, you will meet an older actor, someone who has been around awhile. He will tell you tales and anecdotes, about life in the theatre. He will speak to you about your performance and the performances of others, and he will generalize to you, based on his experience and his intuitions, about the laws of the stage. Ignore this man!'

Any time two characters are talking about a third, the scene is a crock of s***.

Conservatives believe in smaller government and in the power of the electorate. So I think that we're less likely to try to use a dramatic forum to warp people's political views.

Invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school.

Acting is not a genteel profession. Actors used to be buried at a crossroads with a stake through the heart. Those people's performances so troubled the onlookers that they feared their ghosts. An awesome compliment. Those players moved the audience not such that they were admitted to a school, or received a complimentary review, but such that the audience feared for their soul. Now that seems to me something to aim for.

What I value most in my friends is loyalty.

When we fear things I think that we wish for them ... every fear hides a wish

I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly.

Everyone needs money. That's why they call it money

You can't 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.

If You can't tell it to me in one sentence, they can't put it in TV Guide.

If you find that a point cannot be made without narration, it is virtually certain that the point is unimportant to the story (which is to say, to the audience).

I tend to write a lot, which I think is the secret to being prolific.

The mind is a mill which can incessant turn, 'til its mere operation focus the stress inward and the stones grind themselves to dust.

My alma mater is the Chicago Public Library. I got what little educational foundation I got in the third-floor reading room, under the tutelage of a Coca-Cola sign.

There is a profound and ineradicable taint of antisemitism in the British.

The quality I most admire in a man is steadfastness.

I've been alienating my public since I was 20 years old. When 'American Buffalo' came out on Broadway, people would storm out and say, 'How dare he use that kind of language!' Of course I'm alienating the public! That's what they pay me for.

I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.

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.