Quotes from David Mamet

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.

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.

The terror and beauty of the dream come from the connection of previously unrelated mundanities of life.

The individual is not only best qualified to provide his own personal defense, he is the only one qualified to do so: and his right to do so is guaranteed by the Constitution.

I like Bach. I like Randy Newman.

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

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.

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.

I don't really have a social life.

You don't know what life is. You know nothing.

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

You get rich through luck. You get rich through crime. You get rich through fulfilling the needs of another. You can be as greedy as you like. If you can't do one of those three things, you ain't going to get any money.

I'm greedy and ambitious like everybody else.

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 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.

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

In a world we find terrifying, we ratify that which doesn't threaten us.

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.

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

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.

A man stands alone at the plate. This is the time for what? For individual achievement. There he stands alone. But in the field, what? Part of a team.

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

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

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.