Mamet Quotes & Sayings

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

My dad was a labour lawyer, and the ideas that I grew up with - bad management, bad capitalism, robber barons - when I applied this to my own life, I saw that we are all on both sides of the coin. — David Mamet

But my father was also the one who told me I needed to clean up my mouth or I'd never find a man. What's very important to him is manners. Show up on time. Always send thank-you letters. He is one of the more thoughtful humans I've ever met. He's a great man and a very good dad. — Zosia Mamet

A liberal pretending to be a conservative? That's like a straight person pretending to be gay to get greater acceptance. — David Mamet

Acting is a whole boatload of fun, but I prefer to do it on my own terms. — Clara 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

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

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

Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance. — David Mamet

The mind is a mill which can incessant turn, 'til its mere operation focus the stress inward and the stones grind themselves to dust. — David 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

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

I used to think I'd like to be a fireman - in fact, I still would - and the only drawback I could see was coming back to the firehouse, after a day of fighting fires, and still having to put in an eight-hour day writing. — David Mamet

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

I understand that computers, which I once believed to be but a hermaphrodite typewriter-cum-filing cabinet, offer the cyber literate increased ability to communicate. I do not think this is altogether a bad thing, however it may appear on the surface. — 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

Culture exists and evolves to relegate to habit categories of interactions the constant conscious reference to which would make human interaction impossible. — David Mamet

I was bar mitzvahed, which was hard. I feel it was the hardest thing I ever had to do; harder than making a movie. It was a lot of studying, you know. I wasn't a perfect Hebrew reader, and also, they say when you're reading your Torah portion, you're not supposed to memorize it. It turned out very tricky. — Clara Mamet

Show business is and has always been a depraved carnival. — 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

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

I won't ever do e-mail. — David Mamet

There's something in me that just wants to create dialogue. — David Mamet

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

I'm a truly loved kid, and hopefully it will make me a happier adult. — Clara Mamet

We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is. It is not a protective monastery of aesthetic truth. It is a place where everything is incredibly expensive. — David Mamet

Let the cut tell the story. Otherwise you have not got dramatic action, you've got narration. — David Mamet

I'm greedy and ambitious like everybody else. — David Mamet

don't call your wife baby — David Mamet

If you're neurotic and you think, I'm not where I deserve to be or my mother didn't love me, or blah, blah, blah, that lie, that neurotic vision, takes over your life and you're plagued by it 'til it's cleansed. In a play, at the end of the play, the lie is revealed. [T]he better the play is, the more surprising and inevitable the lie is, as Aristotle told us. Plays are about lies. — David Mamet

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

[David] Mamet is another hypocrite. His idea of Black man is a pimp who abuses women, [Edmond], yet his play Oleanna [1994] ends with a White professor slapping an uppity feminist, at least the version I saw at San Francisco's ACT. — Ishmael Reed

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

I don't think there's any information to be gotten from television. — David Mamet

President Obama seems to understand the Constitution as a 'set of suggestions.' — 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

I went to a strict elementary school with nuns, and uniforms that I'm pretty sure were made out of sandpaper. It was an academic, sports-oriented place. I liked to read, and wanted to act, and didn't try out for volleyball. I was weird. The other girls would dip my hair in ink and stuff. — Zosia Mamet

All of us. All of us. We're doomed. — David Mamet

We respond to a drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dreamlife. — David Mamet

Conservatives believe in smaller government and in the power of the electorate. So I think that we're less likely to try to use a dramatic forum to warp people's political views. — David Mamet

Movies were never an art form, they were entertainment. It just evolved into an art form from there, and it's still evolving in different ways. — David Mamet

At the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre, Sanford Meisner said, 'When you go into the professional world, at a stock theatre somewhere, backstage, you will meet an older actor, someone who has been around awhile. He will tell you tales and anecdotes, about life in the theatre. He will speak to you about your performance and the performances of others, and he will generalize to you, based on his experience and his intuitions, about the laws of the stage. Ignore this man!' — David Mamet

I have quite a foul mouth. — Zosia Mamet

Accepted nowhere, belonging nowhere, The Human Ant is forced to roam the world, half-ant, half-cow. — David Mamet

In the meantime: (1) be direct; (2) remember that, being smarter than men, women respond to courtesy and kindness; (3) if you want to know what kind of a wife someone will make, observe her around her father and mother; (4) as to who gets out of the elevator first, I just can't help you. — David Mamet

The basis of drama is ... is the struggle of the hero towards a specific goal at the end of which he realizes that what kept him from it was, in the lesser drama, civilization and, in the great drama, the discovery of something that he did not set out to discover but which can be seen retrospectively as inevitable. The example Aristotle uses, of course, is Oedipus. — David Mamet

JOHN: You said "Good day." I think that it is a nice day today.
CAROL: Is it?
JOHN: Yes, I think it is.
CAROL: And why is that important?
JOHN: Because it is the essence of all human communication. I say something
conventional, you respond, and the information we exchange is not about the
"weather," but that we both agree to converse. In effect, we agree that we are both
human. — David Mamet

I always thought the real violence in Hollywood isn't what's on the screen. It's what you have to do to raise the money. — David Mamet

I am an avid reader! As for writing, I might - someday. But we'll have to wait and see. — Zosia Mamet

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

People may or may not say what they mean ... but they always say something designed to get what they want. — David Mamet

We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law's treatment.

But 'fairness' is not only a nonlegal but an antilegal process, for it deals not with universally applicable principles and strictures, but with specific cases, responding to the perceived or proclaimed needs of individual claimants, and their desire for extralegal preference. And it could be said to substitute fairness (a determination which must always be subjective) for justice (the application of the legislated will of the electorate), is to enshrine greed--the greed, in this case, not for wealth, but for preference. — 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

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

I miss my horse. He's in Los Angeles. — Zosia 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

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

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

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

The pursuit of Fashion is the attempt of the middle class to co-opt tragedy. In adopting the clothing, speech, and personal habits of those in straitened, dangerous, or pitiful circumstances, the middle class seeks to have what it feels to be the exigent and nonequivocal experiences had by those it emulates. — David Mamet

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

Any time two characters are talking about a third, the scene is a crock of s***. — David Mamet

In Chicago, we love our crooks! — 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 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

I didn't knowingly meet a conservative until, to my shame, I was 60 years old and sat down and said, 'Wow, I don't understand what this guy's talking about, but he has a great civility about him. Perhaps I better investigate this thing.' — David Mamet

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

The lighthearted moments of 'Girls' are really not speckled throughout and that to me is just super exciting, to be able to delve into the darkness that you are greeted with in your early 20s and the fear and what that makes you do, the places that you can potentially go with that. — Zosia Mamet

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.' — 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

I loved being in the room with Mamet as a director - he is the most generous, funny, delightful person to work for every day. — Richard Thomas

Many players will not improve because they cannot bear self-knowledge. — David Mamet

Do not internalize the industrial model. You are not one of the myriad of 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 — Seth Godin

I don't know if I would call myself a religious human. — Zosia Mamet

I love Superman. I'm a big fan of anyone who can make his living in his underwear. — David Mamet

I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly. I get up early in the morning and go to work. I love to write. — David Mamet

Encounter: Doubt, Shame, Humiliation. It will finally be worth it. Acting is more about courage than anything else. — David Mamet

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

The dream and the film are the juxtaposition of images in order to answer a question. — David Mamet

I did 'Mad Men' and I still have people come up to me like, 'Are you actually a lesbian?' Really? Just because I play one on TV? People will think what they're gonna think. — Zosia Mamet

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

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

Acting is not a genteel profession. Actors used to be buried at a crossroads with a stake through the heart. Those people's performances so troubled the onlookers that they feared their ghosts. An awesome compliment. Those players moved the audience not such that they were admitted to a school, or received a complimentary review, but such that the audience feared for their soul. Now that seems to me something to aim for. — David Mamet

Mixed martial arts was invented by Brazilians, whose families had been trained by the Japanese. Those Brazilians came to the U.S., where their invention was bought out, gussied up and presented to the world, which found it good. — David Mamet

My tendency as an actor was to correct people, was to say, 'What if we tried it this way, what about if we tried that way?' That's terrible habit for an actor, but that's a good habit for director. So I became a director. — David Mamet

I had a very old woman come up to me on the subway and tell me that the faces that I made in the first episode when a guy is going down on me, that she still makes those faces when her husband goes down on her. — Zosia Mamet

In my family, in the days prior to television, we liked to while away the evenings by making ourselves miserable, solely based on our ability to speak the language viciously. — David Mamet

Some actors are brilliant in David Mamet, but they would crash and burn in my plays and visa-versa. You either have my music in your body, or you don't. — John Patrick Shanley

The sad thing is that I know no athletes' names. I am not a sports girl at all. — Clara 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

Marijuana, for example, won't help one determine the correct aspect ratio ... — David Mamet

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

Get into the scene late; get out of the scene early. — 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

Today, as in ancient Rome, when all avenues of success have been traveled and all prizes won, the final prize is the delusion of godhead. — David Mamet

I hate vacations. There's nothing to do. — David Mamet

David Mamet's writing is pretty spectacular, obviously. I like the honesty of it; I like how funny it is and how sad it is. — T. R. Knight

I wrote and directed a movie called 'Two-Bit Waltz.' — Clara Mamet

Society functions in a way much more interesting than the multiple-choice pattern we have been rewarded for succeeding at in school. Success in life comes not from the ability to choose between the four presented answers, but from the rather more difficult and painfully acquired ability to formulate the questions. — David Mamet