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" When the three branches of government have failed to represent the citizenry and the mass of the media has failed to represent the citizenry, then the citizenry better represent the citizenry. "
David Mamet
Government
Media
Better
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" I always thought the real violence in Hollywood isn't what's on the screen. It's what you have to do to raise the money. "
David Mamet
Violence
Hollywood
Money
" There's nothing in the world more silent than the telephone the morning after everybody pans your play. It won't ring from room service; your mother won't be calling you. If the phone has not rung by 8 in the morning, you're dead. "
David Mamet
Service
World
Phone
" 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
" I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind. "
David Mamet
Mind
View
Liberal
" American football seems to resemble soccer in that one scores by putting the ball through the opponent's goal; but football, truly is about land. The Settlers want to move the line of scrimmage Westward, the Native Americans want to move it East. "
David Mamet
Goal
Football
American
" 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 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
" The quality I most admire in a man is steadfastness. "
David Mamet
Man
Admire
Most
" Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills. "
David Mamet
Original
Drama
Carnival
" I'm greedy and ambitious like everybody else. "
David Mamet
Everybody Else
Like
Everybody
" In practice we, in the world, must do business with each other. "
David Mamet
Business
Practice
Other
" 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. "
David Mamet
Say
Way
Habit
" 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
" 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 don't really have a social life. "
David Mamet
Social
Really
Life
" I've always been fascinated by the picaresque. "
David Mamet
Fascinated
Been
Always
" 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
" People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want. "
David Mamet
Say
Want
Always
" Roll back the clock, and every possession of every great country started with a crime. "
David Mamet
Clock
Great
Crime
" I look back on my liberal political beliefs with a sort of wonder - as another exercise in self-involvement - rewarding myself for some superiority I could not logically describe. "
David Mamet
Back
Exercise
Look
" Art and mass entertainment and propaganda, they can all be plotted on the same graph, but there is a difference. "
David Mamet
Entertainment
Art
Difference
" The essence of jiu-jitsu is philosophy. "
David Mamet
Philosophy
Essence
" In my family, in the days prior to television, we liked to while away the evenings by making ourselves miserable, solely based on our ability to speak the language viciously. "
David Mamet
Language
Television
Family
" I don't think there's any information to be gotten from television. "
David Mamet
Television
Information
Any
" 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
" What I value most in my friends is loyalty. "
David Mamet
Loyalty
Friends
Value
" I'm not the guy to ask about politics. I'm a gag writer. "
David Mamet
Gag
About
Ask
" 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
" 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 love all insider memoirs. It doesn't matter whether it's truck-drivers or doctors. I think everybody likes to go backstage, find out what people think and what they talk about and what specialised job they have. "
David Mamet
Job
Find
Think