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" 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. "

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" 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

" In Chicago, we love our crooks! "

" 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. "

" The Founders recognized that Government is quite literally a necessary evil, that there must be opposition, between its various branches, and between political parties, for these are the only ways to temper the individual's greed for power and the electorates' desires for peace by submission to coercion or blandishment. "

" I've always been fascinated by the picaresque. "

" 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. "

" 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.' "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" They say you can't study Kabbalah until you are at least 40 years old. You know why? You have to have experienced at least one generation making the same mistakes as the previous one. "

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

" You know, young actors say all the time, 'Should I use my own life experience?' And my response is, 'What choice do you have?' "

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

David Mamet

Always

Fact

" The essence of jiu-jitsu is philosophy. "

David Mamet

Philosophy

Essence

" 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. "

" Movies were never an art form, they were entertainment. It just evolved into an art form from there, and it's still evolving in different ways. "

" I love the British. "

" You can't write about history without writing about politics at some point. History is about movements of people. 'What is criminality and what is government' is a theme that runs through every history. "

" I'm entitled to my political opinions, and I get to vote because I'm an American. "

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

" I was fortunate enough to have a rambling youth. "

" One person may need (or want) more leisure, another more work; one more adventure, another more security, and so on. It is this diversity that makes a country, indeed a state, a city, a church, or a family, healthy. 'One-size-fits-all,' and that size determined by the State has a name, and that name is 'slavery.' "

" 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. "

" I'm greedy and ambitious like everybody else. "

David Mamet

Everybody Else

Everybody

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

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

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

" A play is basically a long, formalistic polemic. You can write it without the poetry, and if you do, you may have a pretty good play. We know this because we see plays in translation. Not many people speak Norwegian or Danish or whatever guys like Ibsen spoke, or Russian - yet we understand Chekhov and the others. "

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

David Mamet

British

Profound

" I hate the computer. I hate their spell-check. I won't ever do e-mail. "