David Mamet

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.'

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.

I'm not the guy to ask about politics. I'm a gag writer.

It's upsetting to be a man in our society.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I won't ever do e-mail.

The quality I most admire in a man is steadfastness.

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

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.

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.'

When I started out I was a failed actor.

I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.

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.

I know very well what it is to be out of work and to be cheated by employers and I know what it is to be an employer.

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.

The so-called assault weapons ban is a hoax. It is a political appeal to the ignorant. The guns it supposedly banned have been illegal for 78 years. Did the ban make them 'more' illegal? The ban addresses only the appearance of weapons, not their operation.