Quotes from David Mamet

Cultivate a love of skill. Learn theatrical skills. They will give you continual pleasure, self-confidence, and link you to fifty thousand years of the history of our profession.

Being among my people is a delight. We Jews live among ourselves. I love it.

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.

As long as the protagonist wants something, the audience will want something.

One can read all one wants, and spend eternities in front of a blackboard with a tutor, but one is not going to learn to swim until one gets in the water.

You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way! And that's how you get Capone.

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.

I love all insider memoirs. It doesn't matter whether it's truck-drivers or doctors. I think everybody likes to go backstage, find out what people think and what they talk about and what specialised job they have.

Luck, if there is such a thing, is either going to favor everyone equally or going to exhibit a preference for the prepared.

Obama is a tyrant the same way FDR was a tyrant. He has a view of presidential power that states: the government is in control of the country, and the president is in charge of the government. He's taken an imperial view of the presidency.

I've always been more comfortable sinking while clutching a good theory than swimming with an ugly fact.

Here's what happens in a play. You get involved in a situation where something is unbalanced. If nothing's unbalanced, there's no reason to have a play. If Hamlet comes home from school, and his dad's not dead and asks him if he's had a good time, it's boring. But if something's unbalanced, it must be returned to order.

Every reiteration of the idea that nothing matters debases the human spirit.

It's hard for a Jew of my generation, an American Jew, who is philo-Zionistic, not to romanticize Israel.

The quality I most admire in a man is steadfastness.

Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.

There's no such thing as talent; you just have to work hard enough.

I know very well what it is to be out of work and to be cheated by employers and I know what it is to be an employer.

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.

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

Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance.

I hate vacations. There's nothing to do.

What I value most in my friends is loyalty.

The work of the director is the work of constructing the shot list from the script.