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" Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills. "
David Mamet
Original
Drama
Carnival
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" I love the British. "
David Mamet
Love
I Love
British
" Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance. "
David Mamet
Old
Always
Age
" Liberalism is a religion. Its tenets cannot be proved, its capacity for waste and destruction demonstrated. But it affords a feeling of spiritual rectitude at little or no cost. "
David Mamet
Religion
Feeling
Spiritual
" People only speak to get something. "
David Mamet
People
Something
Only
" Writing a novel is an incredibly free experience. One puts one's self in a narrative mode. You can go off in any direction - the past, the future, or go laterally, or include one's own beliefs. It's total freedom. "
David Mamet
Past
Experience
Freedom
" I didn't knowingly meet a conservative until, to my shame, I was 60 years old and sat down and said, 'Wow, I don't understand what this guy's talking about, but he has a great civility about him. Perhaps I better investigate this thing.' "
David Mamet
Civility
Talking
Meet
" I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly. "
David Mamet
Afraid
Only
Things
" I hate the computer. I hate their spell-check. I won't ever do e-mail. "
David Mamet
E-Mail
Hate
Ever
" I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind. "
David Mamet
Mind
View
Liberal
" 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. "
David Mamet
Cherish
Question
Peace
" President Obama seems to understand the Constitution as a 'set of suggestions.' "
David Mamet
Understand
President
Constitution
" It's hard for a Jew of my generation, an American Jew, who is philo-Zionistic, not to romanticize Israel. "
David Mamet
Israel
Who
American
" It's hard to write a good play because it's hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience. "
David Mamet
Head
Audience
Play
" I've always been fascinated by the picaresque. "
David Mamet
Fascinated
Been
Always
" A stage play is basically a form of uber-schizophrenia. You split yourself into two minds - one being the protagonist and the other being the antagonist. The playwright also splits himself into two other minds: the mind of the writer and the mind of the audience. "
David Mamet
Yourself
You
Stage
" 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. "
David Mamet
Good
Time
Situation
" Each culture has its own form of staged combat, evolved from its particular method of street fighting and cleaned up for presentation as a spectacle, e.g. savate, Cornish wrestling, karate, kung-fu. "
David Mamet
Own
Culture
Up
" Always tell the truth - it's the easiest thing to remember. "
David Mamet
Always
Remember
Tell
" The basis of drama is... the struggle of the hero towards a specific goal at the end of which he realises that what kept him from it was, in the lesser drama, civilisation and, in the great drama, the discovery of something that he did not set out to discover but which can be seen retrospectively as inevitable. "
David Mamet
Struggle
Drama
Great
" The main question in drama, the way I was taught, is always, 'What does the protagonist want?' That's what drama is. It comes down to that. It's not about theme, it's not about ideas, it's not about setting, but what the protagonist wants. "
David Mamet
Way
Always
Drama
" 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. "
David Mamet
Heaven
Fly
Science
" If you're writing an opinion piece, it's your job to write your opinion. If, on the other hand, you wrote a novel, as Virginia Woolf tells us, it would be inappropriate if you let your novel be influenced by your political opinions. "
David Mamet
Job
Opinion
Writing
" The quality I most admire in a man is steadfastness. "
David Mamet
Man
Admire
Most
" You get rich through luck. You get rich through crime. You get rich through fulfilling the needs of another. You can be as greedy as you like. If you can't do one of those three things, you ain't going to get any money. "
David Mamet
You
Crime
Rich
" The essence of jiu-jitsu is philosophy. "
David Mamet
Philosophy
Essence
" It's upsetting to be a man in our society. "
David Mamet
Our
Upsetting
Society
" My dad was an immigrant kid and a Democrat and a Jew, and we didn't know any Republicans in our group. So I grew up Democratic. My dad was a labor lawyer - a very hardworking guy, a one-horse labor lawyer - and then I went to hippie college and lived in the bubble. "
David Mamet
Lawyer
Immigrant
College
" 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. "
David Mamet
Out
Work
Well
" 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. "
David Mamet
Power
View
Way
" The surprise is half the battle. Many things are half the battle, losing is half the battle. Let's think about what's the whole battle. "
David Mamet
Things
Think
Surprise