David Mamet Quotes

76 Sourced Quotes

The pain of losing is diverting. So is the thrill of winning. Winning, however, is lonelier, as those you've won money from are not likely to commiserate with you. Winning takes getting used to.

David Mamet
Blasphemy and prayer are one. Both assert the existence of a superior power. The first, however, with conviction.

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

David Mamet
The terror and beauty of the dream come from the connection of previously unrelated mundanities of life.

David Mamet
One can read all one wants, and spend eternities in front of a blackboard with a tutor, but one is not going to learn to swim until one gets in the water.

David Mamet
Art is about the spontaneous connection of the artist to his own unconscious - about insight beyond reason. If his insight were reasonable, anyone could do it, but anyone cannot. Only few can, and they are called.

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
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
It is the objective of the protagonist that keeps us in our seats.

David Mamet
The great movie can be as free of being a record of the progress of the protagonist as is a dream.

David Mamet
The subject of drama is The Lie. At the end of the drama THE TRUTH -- which has been overlooked, disregarded, scorned, and denied -- prevails. And that is how we know the Drama is done.

David Mamet
It is the writer's job to make the play interesting. It is the actor's job to make the performance truthful.

David Mamet
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
Who ever told you that you could work with men?

David Mamet
Being a writer in Hollywood is like going into Hitler's Eagle's Nest with a great idea for a bar-mitzvah.

David Mamet
The court doesn't exist to give them justice … But to give them a chance for justice.

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
We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.

David Mamet
Art is an expression of joy and awe. It is not an attempt to share one's virtues and accomplishments with the audience, but an act of selfless spirit.

David Mamet
Every reiteration of the idea that nothing matters debases the human spirit.

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
A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.

David Mamet
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.

David Mamet
The Oscars demonstrate the will of the people to control and judge those they have elected to stand above them (much, perhaps, as in bygone days, an election celebrated the same).

David Mamet
A dramatic experience concerned with the mundane may inform but it cannot release; and one concerned essentially with the aesthetic politics of its creators may divert or anger, but it cannot enlighten.

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

David Mamet
The study of acting consists in the main of getting out of one's own way, and in learning to deal with uncertainty and being comfortable being uncomfortable.

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
In a restaurant one is both observed and unobserved. Joy and sorrow can be displayed and observed "unwittingly," the writer scowling naively and the diners wondering, What the hell is he doing?

David Mamet