David Mamet
David Mamet
David Alan Mametis an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film director. As a playwright, Mamet has won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Rossand Speed-the-Plow. Mamet first gained acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway plays in 1976, The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo. His play Race opened on Broadway on December 6, 2009...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth30 November 1947
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
The theatre is traditionally where people go to hear the truth.
We all die in the end, but there's no reason to die in the middle.
How can I be secure? Through amassing wealth beyond all measure? No. And what's beyond measure? That's a sickness. That's a trap. There is no measure. Only greed.
Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it's full of surprises, and you're constantly getting f***ed.
Freud believed that our dreams sometimes recapitulate a speech, a comment we've heard or something that we've read. I always had compositions in my dreams. They would be a joke, a piece of a novel, a witticism or a piece of dialogue from a play, and I would dream them. I would actually express them line by line in the dream. Sometimes after waking up I would remember a snatch or two and write them down. There's something in me that just wants to create dialogue.
Blasphemy and prayer are one. Both assert the existence of a superior power. The first, however, with conviction.
You don't know what life is. You know nothing.
Here is a sovereign talisman against regret: never do that which might engender it.
Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it isn't fun. It's entertainment.
Hitchcock denigrated American films, saying they were all 'pictures of people talking' - as, indeed, most of them are.
President Obama seems to understand the Constitution as a 'set of suggestions.'
People ask me, 'What do you do?' And I tell them I'm a writer, but always with the silent reservation, 'I am, of course, not really a writer. Hemingway was a writer.'
My definition of a 'friend' is, coming from Chicago, someone who says, 'Yeah, sure. You know what? Let's talk about what we can talk about. Let's help each other out. Your politics are none of my business.'
If, indeed, a firearm were more dangerous to its possessors than to potential aggressors, would it not make sense for the government to arm all criminals, and let them accidentally shoot themselves? Is this absurd? Yes, and yet the government, of course, is arming criminals.