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.Collection: Computers
War is tragedy. The great war stories are tragedies. It's the failure of diplomacy. 'War and Peace,' 'A Farewell to Arms,' 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' Those are some of the greatest tragedies.Collection: Peace
Always tell the truth - it's the easiest thing to remember.Collection: Truth
My greatest fear is that the audience will beat me to the punch line.Collection: Fear
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.Collection: Religion
Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance.Collection: Age
Each culture has its own form of staged combat, evolved from its particular method of street fighting and cleaned up for presentation as a spectacle, e.g. savate, Cornish wrestling, karate, kung-fu.
The main question in drama, the way I was taught, is always, 'What does the protagonist want?' That's what drama is. It comes down to that. It's not about theme, it's not about ideas, it's not about setting, but what the protagonist wants.
What I value most in my friends is loyalty.
I love working on a typewriter - the rhythm, the sound; it's like playing the piano, which I do, too.
People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.
American football seems to resemble soccer in that one scores by putting the ball through the opponent's goal; but football, truly is about land. The Settlers want to move the line of scrimmage Westward, the Native Americans want to move it East.
There is a profound and ineradicable taint of antisemitism in the British.
President Obama seems to understand the Constitution as a 'set of suggestions.'
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.
It's only words... unless they're true.
In a world we find terrifying, we ratify that which doesn't threaten us.
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.
I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.
A liberal pretending to be a conservative? That's like a straight person pretending to be gay to get greater acceptance.
Every reiteration of the idea that nothing matters debases the human spirit.
I'm entitled to my political opinions, and I get to vote because I'm an American.
The government, for example, has determined that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people, and, so, must be given certain preferences. Anyone acquainted with both black and white people knows this assessment is not only absurd but monstrous. And yet it is the law.
The surprise is half the battle. Many things are half the battle, losing is half the battle. Let's think about what's the whole battle.
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.
I'm not the guy to ask about politics. I'm a gag writer.
It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs.
I've always been more comfortable sinking while clutching a good theory than swimming with an ugly fact.
It's hard for a Jew of my generation, an American Jew, who is philo-Zionistic, not to romanticize Israel.
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.
I've been alienating my public since I was 20 years old. When 'American Buffalo' came out on Broadway, people would storm out and say, 'How dare he use that kind of language!' Of course I'm alienating the public! That's what they pay me for.
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.
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.
My dad was an immigrant kid and a Democrat and a Jew, and we didn't know any Republicans in our group. So I grew up Democratic. My dad was a labor lawyer - a very hardworking guy, a one-horse labor lawyer - and then I went to hippie college and lived in the bubble.
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.'
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.
Our job, as writers is to do our jobs.
Art and mass entertainment and propaganda, they can all be plotted on the same graph, but there is a difference.
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.
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.
They say you can't study Kabbalah until you are at least 40 years old. You know why? You have to have experienced at least one generation making the same mistakes as the previous one.
Being among my people is a delight. We Jews live among ourselves. I love it.
I love the British.
One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work; one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. 'One-size-fits-all,' and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is 'slavery.'
The Israelis would like to live in peace within their borders; the Arabs would like to kill them all.
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.'
The honest man might observe... that no one gets something for nothing; that politicians go in poor and go out rich; that the Government screws up everything it touches; and that the Will to Believe is best confined to the Religious Venue, as to practice it elsewhere is just too damned expensive.
People only speak to get something.
I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly.
It's upsetting to be a man in our society.