David Mamet Quotes

written without hatred. They are not exploitative attempts to sell soap powder or political candidates; they are parables about the human condition, which, without connection to the divine, is always sin. With thanks to Billy Graham.

My motto is “Be Prepared.” I am told this is also the motto of the Boy Scouts, but, if so, this only proves that they were acting according to my motto earlier than I.

"Every scene should be able to answer three questions: "Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?

Elected federal officials take an oath to uphold the Constitution. When they aren’t held strictly to that oath, we have that anarchy we see metastasizing around us.

Society functions in a way much more interesting than the multiple-choice pattern we have been rewarded for succeeding at in school. Success in life comes not from the ability to choose between the four presented answers, but from the rather more difficult and painfully acquired ability to formulate the questions. Page 28

Justice is the application of previously decided and accepted norms of conduct and the rules for their examination and dispute.

We're all put to the test... but it never comes in the form or at the point we would prefer, does it?

The anti-Stratfordians hold that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare’s plays — it was another fellow of the same name, or of a different name. In this they invert the megalomaniacal equation and make themselves not the elect, but the superior of the elect. Barred from composing Shakespeare’s plays by a regrettable temporal accident, they, in the fantasy of most every editor, accept the mantle of primum mobile, consign the (falsely named) creator to oblivion, and turn to the adulation of the crowd for their deed of discovery and insight — so much more thoughtful and intellectual than the necessarily sloppy work of the writer.

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

"The Godfather, A Place in the Sun, Dodsworth, Galaxy Quest — these are perfect films. They start with a simple premise and proceed logically, and inevitably, toward a conclusion both surprising and inevitable. [From the chapter "The Script."]"

Every reiteration of the idea that _nothing matters_ debases the human spirit.

Every reiteration of the idea that there is no drama in modern life, there is only dramatization, that there is no tragedy, there is only unexplained misfortune, debases us. It denies what we know to be true. In denying what we know, we are as a nation which cannot remember its dreams — like an unhappy person who cannot remember his dreams and so denies that he does dream, and denies that there are such things as dreams.

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

It’s not a lie. It’s a gift for fiction.

Over the last decade “shareholder” has been replaced by “stakeholder.” I will remind my readers that a stakeholder is an onlooker to a gambling event. The contenders in the wager trust the stakeholder to hold their respective bets (the stakes) and at the contest’s conclusion to award them to the winner. The stakeholder is one who, by definition, can have neither interest nor profit in the outcome. I believe no further comment is required.