David Mamet Quotes

Before acting, I was always attracted to words, to literature - be they the words of Williams, Arthur Miller, Shakespeare or Moliere.

A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving human beings, is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon it.

Of course, I'm not allowed to talk about the script, but I can say it is a really good story.

I made mistakes in drama. I thought drama was when actors cried. But drama is when the audience cries.

I think if you're writing a play, it should be its own end game; you'll never get to do a good one unless you know it's not a blueprint for a film; you're not going to get the action right and the story right.

I'd like to be in anything that tells a good story and has an interesting character.

I think a good story's a good story and a good character's a good character.

I love a really good storyline.

Good storytelling appeals to me - good writing.

Drama is action, sir, action and not confounded philosophy.

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

All the modern verse plays, they're terrible; they're mostly about the poetry. It's more important that the play is first.

My background is on the stage, so when I'd write movies, they'd be a lot like plays.

The parallels between a stage and a book are compelling. You, like all authors, create 'characters' in a 'setting' who speak 'dialogue' encased in 'scenes.' Most importantly, you - like the playwright - have an 'audience.'

I write plays about big, intense subjects.

When you write a play, you work out like a musician on a piece of music. You find all the rhythms and the melody and the harmonies and take them as they come.

Anything with a good story and characters I think would be great.

Without great writing, you've got a bunch of actors bumping into each other.

I'm drawn to a good story, really, as I hope most people are. For me, it's the story that's going to stay with you eventually, not necessarily the genre. I go to watch a film because of the story, not because it was a Western or a comedy.

When the drama attains a characterization which makes the play a revelation of human conduct and a dialogue which characterizes yet pleases for itself, we reach dramatic literature.

When I started in the theater, I'd do plays by Shakespeare or Ibsen or Chekhov, and they all created great women's roles.

The essence to me of all good drama is argument.

I would like to write a play.

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.

I went to drama school for three years, and the whole thing there is that hopefully you are introduced to a man called William Shakespeare who is the greatest of all time of all storytelling.