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" It's upsetting to be a man in our society. "
David Mamet
Our
Upsetting
Society
Related Quotes:
" 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
" 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
" What I value most in my friends is loyalty. "
David Mamet
Loyalty
Friends
Value
" I've always been more comfortable sinking while clutching a good theory than swimming with an ugly fact. "
David Mamet
Always
More
Fact
" 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
" Being among my people is a delight. We Jews live among ourselves. I love it. "
David Mamet
Delight
Being
Jews
" I hate vacations. There's nothing to do. "
David Mamet
Vacations
Hate
Nothing
" 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
" The government, for example, has determined that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people, and, so, must be given certain preferences. Anyone acquainted with both black and white people knows this assessment is not only absurd but monstrous. And yet it is the law. "
David Mamet
Government
People
Law
" Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance. "
David Mamet
Old
Always
Age
" My greatest fear is that the audience will beat me to the punch line. "
David Mamet
Punch
Line
Fear
" The product of the artist has become less important than the fact of the artist. We wish to absorb this person. We wish to devour someone who has experienced the tragic. In our society this person is much more important than anything he might create. "
David Mamet
Artist
Important
Society
" The individual is not only best qualified to provide his own personal defense, he is the only one qualified to do so: and his right to do so is guaranteed by the Constitution. "
David Mamet
Personal
Own
Constitution
" 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
" 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
" We respond to a drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dreamlife. "
David Mamet
Which
Respond
Our
" I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly. "
David Mamet
Afraid
Only
Things
" My dad was a labour lawyer, and the ideas that I grew up with - bad management, bad capitalism, robber barons - when I applied this to my own life, I saw that we are all on both sides of the coin. "
David Mamet
Ideas
Bad
Life
" In Chicago, we love our crooks! "
David Mamet
Crooks
Love
Our
" People ask me, 'What do you do?' And I tell them I'm a writer, but always with the silent reservation, 'I am, of course, not really a writer. Hemingway was a writer.' "
David Mamet
You
Always
People
" The liberals in my neighbourhood wouldn't give away Brentwood to the Palestinians, but they want to give away Tel Aviv. "
David Mamet
Give
Liberals
Palestinians
" A liberal pretending to be a conservative? That's like a straight person pretending to be gay to get greater acceptance. "
David Mamet
Acceptance
Conservative
Person
" A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue. "
David Mamet
Dialogue
Film
Without
" I love working on a typewriter - the rhythm, the sound; it's like playing the piano, which I do, too. "
David Mamet
Sound
Love
Too
" If, indeed, a firearm were more dangerous to its possessors than to potential aggressors, would it not make sense for the government to arm all criminals, and let them accidentally shoot themselves? Is this absurd? Yes, and yet the government, of course, is arming criminals. "
David Mamet
Potential
Yes
Dangerous
" Conservatives believe in smaller government and in the power of the electorate. So I think that we're less likely to try to use a dramatic forum to warp people's political views. "
David Mamet
People
Government
Think
" 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 like Bach. I like Randy Newman. "
David Mamet
Randy
Bach
Newman
" I used to think I'd like to be a fireman - in fact, I still would - and the only drawback I could see was coming back to the firehouse, after a day of fighting fires, and still having to put in an eight-hour day writing. "
David Mamet
Writing
Day
Fighting