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Link	Quote	Stars	Tags	Author
1d63594	We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.		humor pie stress eating food	David Mamet
a48299a	Every scene should be able to answer three questions: "Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?"		writing film	David Mamet
fbcbd9c	Every fear hides a wish.			David Mamet
031d58f	Superman comics are a fable, not of strength, but of disintegration. They appeal to the preadolescent, (sic) mind not because they reiterate grandiose delusions, but because they reiterate a very deep cry for help. Superman's two personalities can be integrated only in one thing: only in death. Only Kryptonite cuts through the disguises of both wimp and hero, and affects the man below the disguises. And what is Kryptonite? Kryptonite is all..		disintegration kryptonite superman weakness	David Mamet
747bb2c	My dad, may he rest in peace, taught me many wonderful things. And one of the things he taught me was never ask a guy what you do for a living. He said "If you think about it, when you ask a guy, what do you do you do for a living," you're saying "how may I gauge the rest of your utterances." are you smarter than I am? Are you richer than I am, poorer than I am?" So you ask a guy what do you do for a living, it's the same thing as askin..		profession lesson father	David Mamet
7e95728	Put. That coffee. Down. Coffee's for closers only.			David Mamet
de64151	Invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school.			David Mamet
46cc926	Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it's full of surprises, and you're constantly getting fucked.		hollywood	David Mamet
126de81	As you all know first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.			David Mamet
6f00c47	What is our life: (Pause.) it's looking forward or it's looking back. And that's our life. That's it. Where is the moment?		present past life moment	David Mamet
ae9b882	Fox: It's lonely at the top. Gould: But it ain't crowded.			David Mamet
4f276e4	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 do..		tragedy real_life	David Mamet
3940fc9	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.		success	David Mamet
cd43a08	The first rule of tinkering is, of course, 'save all the parts.' But in dismantling the social fabric, the parts cannot all be saved, for one of them is . Time, we were told, is a river flowing endlessly through the universe and one cannot step into the same river twice. Not only can we not undo actions taken in haste and in fear (the Japanese Internment), but those taken from the best reasons, but that have proved destructive (affirmative..			David Mamet
4058463	We can only interpret the behavior of others through the screen we create.			David Mamet
c2fdd86	What is Big Government but the Executive's cocaine dream, an activity devoted to jockeying for position, in which he may find license for malversation, and may take the company treasury and direct it toward those people who will support his continued incumbency--it is within the law. Its street name is 'earmarks,' but it is theft.			David Mamet
ee5ef1a	In the meantime: (1) be direct; (2) remember that, being smarter than men, women respond to courtesy and kindness; (3) if you want to know what kind of a wife someone will make, observe her around her father and mother; (4) as to who gets out of the elevator first, I just can't help you.		men women	David Mamet
05b4811	Roma Lingk Roma * * * . . . Eh? What I'm saying, what is our life? It's looking forward or it's looking back. And that's our life. That's Where is the ? And what is it that we're afraid of? Loss. What else? The closes. We get , my wife died on a plane, the stock market collapsed . . . the house burnt down . . . what of these happen . . . ? None of 'em. We worry anyway. What does this mean? I'm not How can I be secure? Thr..			David Mamet
43d4a8b	I examined my Liberalism and found it like an addiction to roulette. Here, though the odds are plain, and the certainty of loss apparent to anyone with a knowledge of arithmetic, the addict, failing time and again, is convinced he yet is graced with the power to contravene natural laws. The roulette addict, when he invariably comes to grief, does not examine either the nature of roulette, or of his delusion, but retires to develop a new sys..			David Mamet
ecfbe2a	How can I be secure? (Pause.) Through amassing wealth beyond all measure? No. And what's beyond measure? That's a sickness. That's a trap. There is no measure. Only greed.			David Mamet
1e795c0	It is to a dramatist, which is to say, to an unfrocked psychoanalyst, stunning that that which has sustained the Left in my generation, its avatar, its prime issue, has been abortion. For, whether or not it is regarded as a woman's right, an unfortunate necessity, or murder, which is to say, irrespective of differing and legitimate political views, to enshrine it as the important test of the Liberal, is, mythologically, an assertion to th..			David Mamet
ee65334	In the sixties, the Commune emerged as a riposte to the nuclear family. This was an autonomic re-creation of not only preindustrial, but pre-agrarian life; it was the Return to Nature, but the Commune, like the colleges from which the idea reemerged, only functioned if Daddy was paying the bills, for the rejection of property can work only in subvention or in slavery. It is only in a summer camp (College or the hippie commune) that the enli..		hippies progressives	David Mamet
27d3b6d	They were and are children of privilege... the privilege taught, learned, and imbibed, in a "liberal arts education" is the privilege to indict. These children have, in the main, never worked, learned to obey, command, construct, amend, or complete - to actually contribute to the society. They have learned to be shrill, and that their indictment, on the economy, on sex, on race, on the environment, though based on no experience other than h..			David Mamet
e0abecb	Well, there are those who would say it's a form of aggression." "What is?" "A surprise."			David Mamet
a789855	We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law's treatment. But 'fairness' is not only a nonlegal but an antilegal process, for it deals not with universally applicable princi..			David Mamet
cb91342	FAUSTUS. To have fooled the philosopher. MAGUS. One finds, in my profession, sir, the greater the intellect, the more ease in its misdirection. FAUSTUS. One finds the same in mine.			David Mamet
5c8993c	I pray you indulge me for a space, for I am going to set out on a speech which may have some duration, but whose theme may be gleaned from its opening phrase: how dare you.		relationships	David Mamet
37fd1f0	Matrimony and monogamy have forever been linked with property and inheritance, the nuclear family, in the West, having been decided upon through trial and error as the most effective unit for preservation of both. In			David Mamet
1628d45	And there are plays - and books and songs and poems and dances - that are perhaps upsetting or intricate or unusual, that leave you unsure, but which you think about perhaps the next day, and perhaps for a week, and perhaps for the rest of your life. Because they aren't clean, they aren't neat, but there's something in them that comes from the heart, and, so, goes to the heart.			David Mamet
139f16a	And there are plays - and books and songs and poems and dances - that are perhaps upsetting or intricate or unusual, that leave you unsure, but which you think about perhaps the next day, and perhaps for a week, and perhaps for the rest of your life. Because they aren't clean, they aren't neat, but there's something in them that comes from the heart, and, so, goes to the heart. What comes from the head is perceived by the audience, the chil..			David Mamet
ab44536	The Chicago literary tradition is born not out of its Universities, but out of the sports desk and the city desk of its newspapers. Hemingway revolutionized English prose. His inspiration was the telegraph, whose use, at Western Union, taught this: every word costs something, This, of course, is the essence of poetry, which is the essence of great prose. Chicagoan literature came from the newspaper, whose purpose, in those days, was to Tel..		writing	David Mamet
6b01ec5	The baby boomer generation, my own, is content, if of the Left, to live out our remaining years upon the work and upon the entitlements created by our parents, and to entail the costs upon our children--to tax industry out of the country, to tax wealth away from its historical role and use as the funder of innovation.			David Mamet
e3bd521	When you come into the theater, you have to be willing to say, "We're all here to undergo a communion, to find out what is going on in this world." If you're not willing to say that, what you get is entertainment instead of art, and poor entertainment at that."			David Mamet
1fe78c7	Accepted nowhere, belonging nowhere, The Human Ant is forced to roam the world, half-ant, half-cow.			David Mamet
30a5b01	Kraus asks the question of Freudian analysis: What would be enough? At what point would talking about one's problems for x hours a week, be sufficient to bring one to a state of "normalcy"? The genius of Freudianism, Kraus writes, is not the creation of a cure, but of a disease--the universal, if intermittent, human sentiment that "something is not right," elaborated into a state whose parameters, definitions, and prescriptions are controll..		psychology	David Mamet
30ae892	However much our quotidian cares consume us, our dreamtime is too valuable, and will be devoted to problems not susceptible to rational consideration.			David Mamet
f965c18	An American will fight for three things.'" "...a girl," Sam said. "Yes. A girl, himself, or 'to save the world." --			David Mamet
3f6a7b9	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.			David Mamet
79ac680	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.			David Mamet
85f0bdd	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) cr..			David Mamet
b53b72e	My generation has a giddy delight in dissolution. [...] To inspire the unsophisticated young to demand "change" is an easy and a cheap trick-- it was the tactic of the Communist Internationale in the thirties, another "movement.[...] We were self-taught in the sixties to award ourselves merit for membership in a superior group-irrespective of our group's accomplishments. We continue to do so, irrespective of accomplishments, individual or c..		baby-boomers	David Mamet
7c43c3f	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."			David Mamet
84803b6	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."			David Mamet
594171a	For we rationalize, objectify, and personalize the process of the game exactly as we do that of a play, a drama. For, finally, it is a drama, with meaning for our lives. Why else would we watch it?			David Mamet

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