Mamet Quotes

People only speak to get something. If I say, Let me tell you a few things about myself, already your defenses go up; you go, Look, I wonder what he wants from me, because no one ever speaks except to obtain an objective. That's the only reason anyone ever opens their mouth, onstage or offstage. They may use a language that seems revealing, but if so, it's just coincidence, because what they're trying to do is accomplish an objective. ~ David Mamet

Having spent too many years in show business, the one thing I see that succeeds is persistence. It's the person who just ain't gonna go home. I decided early on that I wasn't going to go home. This is what I'll be doing until they put me in jail or in a coffin. ~ David Mamet

Characters on stage, like people in what we refer to as "real life," do not speak to reveal themselves. They do not speak to conceal themselves. They speak to get whatever it is that they want. It is the only reason they speak. ~ David Mamet

The main question in drama, the way I was taught, is always, 'What does the protagonist want?' That's what drama is. It comes down to that. It's not about theme, it's not about ideas, it's not about setting, but what the protagonist wants. ~ David Mamet

The popularity of disaster movies expresses a collective perception of a world threatened by irresistible and unforeseen forces which nevertheless are thwarted at the last moment. Their thinly veiled symbolic meaning might be translated thus: We are innocent of wrongdoing. We are attacked by unforeseeable forces come to harm us. We are, thus, innocent even of negligence. Though those forces are insuperable, chance will come to our aid and we shall emerge victorious. ~ David Mamet

The purpose of technique is to free the unconscious. If you follow the rules ploddingly, they will allow your unconscious to be free. ~ David Mamet

When I started out I was a failed actor. ~ David Mamet

Where in the wide history of the world do we find art created by the excessively wealthy, powerful, or educated? ~ David Mamet

Let the cut tell the story. Otherwise you have not got dramatic action, you've got narration. ~ 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 look back on my liberal political beliefs with a sort of wonder - as another exercise in self-involvement - rewarding myself for some superiority I could not logically describe. ~ David Mamet

It's hard to write a good plot, it's very hard. ~ 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

The greater the intellect, the more ease in its misdirection. ~ David Mamet

Always be closing. ~ David Mamet

A good writer gets better only by learning to cut, to remove the ornamental, the descriptive, the narrative, and especially the deeply felt and meaningful. What remains? The story remains. ~ David Mamet

The work of the director is the work of constructing the shot list from the script. ~ David Mamet

Opportunity may knock, but it seldom nags. ~ David Mamet

It's upsetting to be a man in our society. ~ David Mamet

I did about 10-12 national commercials and then got one line parts in things like 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' and the show 'The Unit.' Got a little part in the movie 'Redbelt' by David Mamet and kept slowly grinding up and then started getting bigger parts in independents and getting noticed by Liz Meriwether. ~ Jake Johnson

I hate that we look at women who choose not to run a country as having given up. I get angry that, when a woman decides to hold off on gunning for a promotion because she wants to have a baby, other women whisper that 'she's throwing away her potential.' That is when we're not supporting our own. Who are we to put such a limited definition on success? ~ Zosia Mamet

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

IF YOU PRETEND THE CHARACTERS CANT SPEAK, AND WRITE A SILENT MOVIE, YOU WILL BE WRITING GREAT DRAMA. ~ David Mamet

I would probably do anything with David Mamet. He's so great. I just love his writing. ~ Val Kilmer

The product of the artist has become less important than the fact of the artist. We wish to absorb this person. We wish to devour someone who has experienced the tragic. In our society this person is much more important than anything he might create. ~ David Mamet

All drama is about lies. All drama is about something that's hidden. A drama starts because a situation becomes imbalanced by a lie. The lie may be something we tell each other or something we think about ourselves, but the lie imbalances a situation. If you're cheating on your wife the repression of that puts things out of balance; or if you're someone you think you're not, and you think you should be further ahead in your job, that neurotic vision takes over your life and you're plagued by it until you're cleansed. At the end of a play the lie is revealed. The better the play the more surprising and inevitable the lie is. Aristotle told us this ~ David Mamet

We long ago ceased expecting that a President speak his own words. We no longer expect him actually to know the answers to questions put to him. We have, in effect, come to elect newscasters-and by a similar process: not for their probity or for their intelligence, but for their "believability."

"Hope" is a very different exhortation than, for example, save, work, cooperate, sacrifice, think. It means: "Hope for the best, in a process over which you have no control." For, if one had control, if one could endorse a candidate with actual, rational programs, such a candidate demonstrably possessed of character and ability sufficient to offer reasonable chance of carrying these programs out, we might require patience or understanding, but why would we need hope?

We have seen the triumph of advertising's bluntest and most ancient tool, the unquantifiable assertion: "New" in what way? "Improved" how? "Better" than what? "Change" what in particular? "Hope" for what?

These words, seemingly of broad but actually of no particular meaning, are comforting in a way similar to the self-crafted wedding ceremony.

Whether or not a spouse is "respecting the other's space," is a matter of debate; whether or not he is being unfaithful is a matter of discernible fact. The author of his own marriage vows is like the supporter of the subjective assertion. He is voting for codependence. He neither makes nor requires an actual commitment. He'd simply like t ~ David Mamet

The Chicago literary tradition is born not out of its Universities, but out of the sports desk and the city desk of its newspapers. Hemingway revolutionized English prose. His inspiration was the telegraph, whose use, at Western Union, taught this: every word costs something,
This, of course, is the essence of poetry, which is the essence of great prose. Chicagoan literature came from the newspaper, whose purpose, in those days, was to Tell What Happened. Hemingway's epiphany was reported, earlier, by Keats as " 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty' --that is all ye know earth, and all ye need to know." I would add to Keats' summation only this: "Don't let the other fellow piss on your back and tell you it's raining."
I believe one might theoretically forgive one who cheats at business, but never one who cheats at cards; for business adversaries operate at arm's length, the cardplayer under the strict rules of the game, period.
That was my first political epiphany.
And now, I have written a political book.
What are the qualifications for a Political Writer?
They are, I believe, the same as those of an aspiring critic: an inability to write for the Sports Page. ~ David Mamet

Fun is what you do for yourself. If somebody else does it, it's entertainment. ~ David Mamet

No one enjoys being equal. ~ David Mamet

I've never seen a movie director who was happier to be directing a movie than Dave [Mamet]. His sets, everyone who's ever been involved with one of them will tell you of the funnest, funniest sets you can be on. ~ Clark Gregg

Roll back the clock, and every possession of every great country started with a crime. ~ David Mamet

Anyone ever lost in the wild knows that nature wants you dead. ~ David Mamet

My idea of perfect happiness is a healthy family, peace between nations, and all the critics die. ~ David Mamet

A novel it's different. It's kind of exhilarating not to have to cut to the bone constantly. Oh, well I can go over here for a moment. I can say what I think the guy was thinking or what the day looked like or what the bird was doing. If you do that as a playwright, you're dead. ~ David Mamet

We recipients of the boon of liberty have always been ready, when faced with discomfort, to discard any and all first principles of liberty, and, further, to indict those who do not freely join with us in happily arrogating those principles. ~ David Mamet

I'm entitled to my political opinions, and I get to vote because I'm an American. ~ David Mamet

Train yourself for a profession that does not exist. ~ David Mamet

The problem play is a melodrama cleansed of invention. ~ David Mamet

Like Lincoln said: "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," and I feel the same way about the leftist dismantling of the West. If that's not wrong, then nothing is wrong. ~ David Mamet

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

Any claim to actual identification as a drama must rest upon the construction of a plot independent of the assignment of affliction to the protagonist. ~ David Mamet

Show business is and has always been a depraved carnival. ~ David Mamet

We're all put to the test ... but it never comes in the form or at the point we would prefer, does it? ~ David Mamet

It's called a confidence game. Why? Because you give me your confidence? No. Because I give you mine. ~ David Mamet

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

And there are plays – and books and songs and poems and dances – that are perhaps upsetting or intricate or unusual, that leave you unsure, but which you think about perhaps the next day, and perhaps for a week, and perhaps for the rest of your life.

Because they aren't clean, they aren't neat, but there's something in them that comes from the heart, and, so, goes to the heart. ~ David Mamet

The conventional wisdom with David Mamet is, you do not change a word. And that agrees with me. If you want to change any of David's words, it's like wanting to change the iambic pentameter in Shakespeare - you should do something else. ~ John C. McGinley

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. ~ David Mamet

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

In playwriting, you've got to be able to write dialogue. And if you write enough of it and let it flow enough, you'll probably come across something that will give you a key as to structure. I think the process of writing a play is working back and forth between the moment and the whole. The moment and the whole, the fluidity of the dialogue and the necessity of a strict construction. Letting one predominate for a while and coming back and fixing it so that eventually what you do, like a pastry chef, is frost your mistakes, if you can. ~ David Mamet

I haven't found it to be particularly enjoyable ... ninety percent of the time when I go on dates, I'm thinking, 'I could be reading my book instead.' ~ Zosia 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

My mom was onstage when she was pregnant with me. ~ Zosia Mamet

All the characters on 'Girls' are growing and changing, which is how real people behave, especially when we're young, trying to figure out who we are, doing things that are the polar opposite of our characteristics. ~ Zosia Mamet

In the sixties, the Commune emerged as a riposte to the nuclear family. This was an autonomic re-creation of not only preindustrial, but pre-agrarian life; it was the Return to Nature, but the Commune, like the colleges from which the idea reemerged, only functioned if Daddy was paying the bills, for the rejection of property can work only in subvention or in slavery. It is only in a summer camp (College or the hippie commune) that the enlightened live on the American Plan - room and board included prepaid - and one is free to frolic all day in the unspoiled woods. ~ David Mamet

Success isn't about winning everything; it's about achieving your dream, be that teaching middle school or flying jets. And no matter what we as individual women want, no matter what our goals, we have to support one another. ~ Zosia Mamet

If I could go back would I do it differently? Well, I can't go back. ~ David Mamet

The secret knowledge is there's nobody home but us chickens. The Constitution was written by a bunch of regular guys who tried to get together and thrash out a contract under which they could get together that would keep people together. ~ 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

Put. That coffee. Down. Coffee's for closers only. ~ David Mamet

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. ~ David Mamet

I won't ever do e-mail. ~ David Mamet

What is our life: (Pause.) it's looking forward or it's looking back. And that's our life. That's it. Where is the moment? ~ David Mamet

You want to get Capone? Here's how you get him: he pulls a knife, you pull a gun, he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. It's the Chicago way and that's how you get Capone. ~ David Mamet

My parents have always been very supportive. I didn't go to school because my home was my school. ~ Clara Mamet

It's hard to write a good play because it's hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience. ~ David Mamet

Welcome to Chicago. This town stinks like a whorehouse at low tide. ~ David Mamet

My dad has always been really helpful. He taught me that talent is a bonus, but persistence is what wins out. ~ Zosia Mamet

You got an all-out prize fight, you wait 'til the fight's over, one guy's left standing and that's how you know who's won. ~ 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

A stage play is basically a form of uber-schizophrenia. You split yourself into two minds - one being the protagonist and the other being the antagonist. The playwright also splits himself into two other minds: the mind of the writer and the mind of the audience. ~ David Mamet

For the record, if you're not a stage actor, climbing onto Broadway and tackling something like David Mamet is not an easy thing to do. ~ Jeremy Piven

My motto is "Be Prepared." I am told this is also the motto of the Boy Scouts, but, if so, this only proves that they were acting according to my motto earlier than I. ~ David Mamet

Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills. ~ David Mamet

Forget narrative, backstory, characterisation, exposition, all of that. Just make the audience want to know what happens next. ~ David Mamet

David Mamet we all know is a great screenplay writer and playwright and a great director. If you like him, you like him. If you hate him, you really hate him. He's someone who's into controversy, you know what I mean? That's David Mamet. ~ Tom Hardy

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

Give me an 18-hour day on set or in the theater, and I will be the happiest person alive. ~ Zosia Mamet

Every scene should be able to answer three questions: Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now? ~ David Mamet

I am a private human. ~ Zosia Mamet

I'm not the guy to ask about politics. I'm a gag writer. ~ David Mamet

For we rationalize, objectify, and personalize the process of the game exactly as we do that of a play, a drama. For, finally, it is a drama, with meaning for our lives. Why else would we watch it? ~ David Mamet

They say the definition of ambivalence is watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your new Cadillac. ~ David Mamet

I don't have any experience with film schools. I suspect that they're useless, because I've had experience with drama schools, and have found them to be useless. ~ David Mamet

For me, it's owning the fact that I have a sensitive disposition along with a rampant imagination that makes up stories and convinces me they're true. I feel things intensely, and that sometimes brings me on wave of profound sorrow. ~ Zosia Mamet

When I was little, I went to a Jewish community day school for most of elementary school. ~ Clara Mamet

I grew up in a tough neighborhood and we used to say you can get further with a kind word and a gun than just a kind word. ~ David Mamet

Writing a novel is an incredibly free experience. One puts one's self in a narrative mode. You can go off in any direction - the past, the future, or go laterally, or include one's own beliefs. It's total freedom. ~ David Mamet

When you come into the theatre, you have to be willing to say, 'We're all here to undergo a communion, to find out what the hell is going on in this world.' If you're not willing to say that, what you get is entertainment instead of art, and poor entertainment at that. ~ David Mamet

The audience perceives only what the actor wants to do to the other actor. ~ David Mamet

Writers are asked, 'How could you know so much about [fill in the profession]?' The answer, if the writing satisfies, is that one makes it up. And the job, my job, as a dramatist, was not to write accurately, but to write persuasively. If and when I do my job well, subsequent cowboys, as it were, will talk like me. ~ David Mamet

I wrote two plays before I was cast on 'The Neighbors.' They actually got published, which was cool. ~ Clara Mamet

I love working on a typewriter - the rhythm, the sound; it's like playing the piano, which I do, too. ~ David Mamet

It is to a dramatist, which is to say, to an unfrocked psychoanalyst, stunning that that which has sustained the Left in my generation, its avatar, its prime issue, has been abortion. For, whether or not it is regarded as a woman's right, an unfortunate necessity, or murder, which is to say, irrespective of differing and legitimate political views, to enshrine it as the most important test of the Liberal, is, mythologically, an assertion to the ultimate right of a postreligious Paganism. ~ David Mamet

The job of the artist, is to say, wait a second, everything that we have thought is wrong. Let's re-examine it. ~ David Mamet

My Alma mater is the Chicago Public Library. ~ David Mamet

There's no such thing as talent; you just have to work hard enough. ~ David Mamet

It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs. ~ David Mamet

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. ~ David Mamet