Quotes from David Mamet

There's nothing in the world more silent than the telephone the morning after everybody pans your play. It won't ring from room service your mother won't be calling you. If the phone has not rung by 8 in the morning, you're dead.

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.

Aaronow: Yes. I mean are you actually talking about this, or are we just…Moss: No, we're just…Aaronow: We're just "talking" about it.Moss: We're just speaking about it. (Pause.) As an idea.Aaronow: As an idea.Moss: Yes.Aaronow: We're not actually talking about it.

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.

It's upsetting to be a man in our society.

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.

I'm not the guy to ask about politics. I'm a gag writer.

My idea of perfect happiness is a healthy family, peace between nations, and all the critics die.

When the three branches of government have failed to represent the citizenry and the mass of the media has failed to represent the citizenry, then the citizenry better represent the citizenry.

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

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 product of the artist has become less important than the fact of the artist. We wish to absorb this person. We wish to devour someone who has experienced the tragic. In our society this person is much more important than anything he might create.

The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong; that the bumblebee can fly; that, perhaps, one should never trust an expert; that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by those with an academic bent.

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.

Always tell the truth -- it's the easiest thing to remember.

An unidentified man in nailhead denim was fished out of the Chicago River, wrapped in chains locked to a Duesenberg hood ornament.

FORD: That's right - and you said, when you've done something unforgiveable, forgive yourself, and that's what I've done, and it's done.

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).

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.

The proclamation and repetition of first principles is a constant feature of life in our democracy. Active adherence to these principles, however, has always been considered un-American. 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.

We respond to a drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dream life.

Always tell the truth. It's the easiest thing to remember.

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

It's only words... unless they're true.