Quotes from David Mamet

Always be closing.

An American will fight for three things.'" "…a girl," Sam said. "Yes. A girl, himself, or 'to save the world.

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

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.

It is more frightening but it is not less productive to go your own way, to form your own theatre company, to write and stage your own plays, to make your own films. You have an enormously greater chance of eventually presenting yourself to, and eventually appealing to, an audience by striking out on your own, by making your own plays and films, than by submitting to the industrial model of the school and studio.

I]n the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.

However much our quotidian cares consume us, our dreamtime is too valuable, and will be devoted to problems not susceptible to rational consideration.

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.

The audience wants to be piqued, to be misled, to be disappointed at times, so that it can, finally, be fulfilled. The audience therefore needs the second act to end with a question.

The millennia-long evolution of the human family as a means of dealing with the environment was discarded by my generation of fantasists, in favor of a concept not only artificial, but inchoate: "freedom"—the pursuit of which has led to misery.

The audience can endorse the triviality of modern art, but they can't like it.

But shame, a breaking open of the heart before God, leads, so the Rabbis say, to that true self-knowledge necessary for change. For

How was her crumbcake? oh.. from the store... .......

The leaf of the camomile, parboiled in water, conduces to calm. And yet I do not worship it.

The political impulse, similarly, must, however manifested, proceed from a universal urge to order social relations. Emotions

When you leave the theater wanting to discuss the play, that's a good play. When you leave the theater wanting to discuss your life and the world, that's art

The man had been the head of the postwar European operation called Aliyah Bet, the clandestine resettlement of the Jewish remnant of the Holocaust in Palestine. He had come to this position as a senior member of the Palmach, the fighting arm of the Haganah, which was the underground Jewish Army in Palestine, under the British Mandate.

The problem play is a melodrama cleansed of invention.

All drama is about lies. When the lie is exposed, the play is over.

the Great Actor, capable of bringing herself to tears, may extort our admiration for her "accomplishment," but she will never leave us stronger; she has made us pay a price, and made us pretend we like it, but we leave the theatre moved only by our capacity to be moved.

The whole entire world. There is no law. There is no right and wrong. The world is lies. There is no friendship. Every fucking thing. Every God-forsaken thing.

An Evangelical who thinks the world is ending is called a religious fanatic; a liberal who thinks so is called an environmentalist."—Dennis Prager * Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind.

What gives you the right. Yes. To speak to a woman in your private Ã¢â'¬Â¦ Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You feel yourself empowered Ã¢â'¬Â¦ you say so yourself. To strut. To posture. To "perform." To "Call me in here Ã¢â'¬Â¦Ã¢â'¬Â Eh? You say that higher education is a joke. And treat it as such, you treat it as such. And confess to a taste to play the Patriarch in your class. To grant this. To deny that. To embrace your students.

Flattery takes away the capacity of the listener to make a rational, unbiased opinion.