David Mamet Quotes

76 Sourced Quotes

The conscious mind is going to suggest the obvious, the cliché, because these things have offered the security of having succeeded in the past.

David Mamet
Don't write stage directions. If it is not apparent what the character is trying to accomplish by saying the line, tell us how the character said it or whether or not she moved to the couch isn't going to aid the case.

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
The Israelis would like to live in peace within their borders; the Arabs would like to kill them all.

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

David Mamet
Luck, if there is such a thing, is either going to favor everyone equally or going to exhibit a preference for the prepared.

David Mamet
We cannot live without trade. A society can neither advance nor improve without excess of disposable income. This excess can only be amassed through the production of goods and services necessary or attractive to the mass. A financial system which allows this leads to inequality; one that does not leads to mass starvation.

David Mamet
First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado.. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.

David Mamet
Cultivate a love of skill. Learn theatrical skills. They will give you continual pleasure, self-confidence, and link you to fifty thousand years of the history of our profession.

David Mamet
The audience will teach you how to act and the audience will teach you how to write and to direct. The classroom will teach you how to obey, and obedience in the theatre will get you nowhere. It's a soothing falsity.

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

David Mamet
The actor does not need to become the character. There is no character. There are only lines on a page.

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 can envision no device more capable of spreading ignorance and illiteracy than the computer. It is, I think, like the atom bomb, a naturally evolved engine of destruction, a sign, like the Tower of Babel, that civilization has run its course.

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

David Mamet