360 Quotes by David Mamet

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

I tend to write a lot, which I think is the secret to being prolific.

Cultivate a love of skill. Learn theatrical skills. They will give you continual pleasure, self-confidence, and link you to fifty thousand years of the history of our profession.

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

Characters on stage, like people in what we refer to as "real life," do not speak to reveal themselves. They do not speak to conceal themselves. They speak to get whatever it is that they want. It is the only reason they speak.

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.

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.

They say the definition of ambivalence is watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your new Cadillac.

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.