David Mamet

You know, I once read an interesting book which said that, uh, most people lost in the wilds, they, they die of shame. Yeah, see, they die of shame. 'What did I do wrong? How could I have gotten myself into this?' And so they sit there and they... die. Because they didn't do the one thing that would save their lives. Thinking.
― David Mamet

We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability'.
― David Mamet

Every scene should be able to answer three questions: "Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don't get it? Why now?"
― David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business

Everybody makes their own fun. If you don't make it yourself, it isn't fun. It's entertainment.
― David Mamet

Invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school.
― David Mamet, True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor

All drama is about lies. All drama is about something that’s hidden. A drama starts because a situation becomes imbalanced by a lie. The lie may be something we tell each other or something we think about ourselves, but the lie imbalances a situation. If you’re cheating on your wife the repression of that puts things out of balance; or if you’re someone you think you’re not, and you think you should be further ahead in your job, that neurotic vision takes over your life and you’re plagued by it until you’re cleansed. At the end of a play the lie is revealed. The better the play the more surprising and inevitable the lie is. Aristotle told us this.
― David Mamet


... 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 asking a guy, let me know what your politics are before I listen to you so I know whether or not you’re part of my herd, in which case I can nod knowingly, or part of the other herd, in which case I can wish you dead.
― David Mamet


Art is an expression of joy and awe. It is not an attempt to share one's virtues and accomplishments with the audience, but an act of selfless spirit.
― David Mamet, True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor

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.
― David Mamet, Writing in Restaurants: Essays and Prose

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.
― David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture

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. 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 action); the essential mechanism of societal preservation is not inspiration, but restraint.
― David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture

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, Glengarry Glen Ross

Every fear hides a wish.
― David Mamet, Edmond