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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
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A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.
David Mamet
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Where in the wide history of the world do we find art created by the excessively wealthy, powerful, or educated?
David Mamet
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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
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Culture exists and evolves to relegate to habit categories of interactions the constant conscious reference to which would make human interaction impossible.
David Mamet
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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
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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
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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
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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
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The Israelis would like to live in peace within their borders; the Arabs would like to kill them all.
David Mamet
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It's called a confidence game. Why? Because you give me your confidence? No. Because I give you mine.
David Mamet
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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
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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
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First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado.. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.
David Mamet
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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
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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
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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
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Anyone ever lost in the wild knows that nature wants you dead.
David Mamet
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The actor does not need to become the character. There is no character. There are only lines on a page.
David Mamet
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They say the definition of ambivalence is watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your new Cadillac.
David Mamet
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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
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Quote of the day
Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
Faith Baldwin
David Mamet
Creative Commons
Born:
November 30, 1947
(age 76)
Bio:
David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film director. As a playwright, Mamet has won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed-the-Plow.
Known for:
American Buffalo (1977)
Glengarry Glen Ross (1983)
Speed-the-Plow (1988)
Oleanna (1992)
Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1974)
Most used words:
character
audience
prize
human
teach
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