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" 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. "

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" 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 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. "

" It is not the constitutional prerogative of the Government to determine needs. "

" 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. "

" There's no such thing as talent; you just have to work hard enough. "

" 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. "

" A liberal pretending to be a conservative? That's like a straight person pretending to be gay to get greater acceptance. "

" There's something in me that just wants to create dialogue. "

David Mamet

Something

Dialogue

" In Chicago, we love our crooks! "

" In practice we, in the world, must do business with each other. "

" I've always been more comfortable sinking while clutching a good theory than swimming with an ugly fact. "

David Mamet

Always

Fact

" 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. "

" I've been alienating my public since I was 20 years old. "

" It's only words... unless they're true. "

" 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. "

" Listen, here's the thing about an English degree - if you sat somebody down and asked them to make a list of the writers they admire over the last hundred years, see how many of them got a degree in English. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There is a profound and ineradicable taint of antisemitism in the British. "

David Mamet

British

Profound

" Always tell the truth - it's the easiest thing to remember. "

" People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want. "

" When I started out I was a failed actor. "

" My definition of a 'friend' is, coming from Chicago, someone who says, 'Yeah, sure. You know what? Let's talk about what we can talk about. Let's help each other out. Your politics are none of my business.' "

" It's hard to write a good plot, it's very hard. "

" I don't really have a social life. "

" 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. "

" My tendency as an actor was to correct people, was to say, 'What if we tried it this way, what about if we tried that way?' That's terrible habit for an actor, but that's a good habit for director. So I became a director. "

" 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. "

" I hate vacations. There's nothing to do. "

" I grew up in a tough neighborhood and we used to say you can get further with a kind word and a gun than just a kind word. "