David Mamet Quotes

I'm a dramatist.

I love novels, but I'm not a novelist. I'm just a dramatist, which means I write lines for actors. That's all I have ever wanted to do.

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

I was trained as a straight dramatist.

I'm a big believer in keeping the stage directions really tight.

Even when I was in school shows, in elementary school doing plays, I'd always go off book and start improvising.

I see theater as a simple formula. Audience plus players plus story makes the play.

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.

The roles I'm interested in or have been interested in, you know, it's going to get down to conflict. Drama is conflict - conflict of interests.

As a child, I was always interested in drama and performance.

I went to drama school in Scotland.

I write my plays to create an excuse for full-tilt acting and performing.

I drifted into acting. My grandfather had a house in Buffalo in which there was a stage, and his friends met every two weeks or so to put on plays. So it was natural for me to put on plays, too, when I went to boarding school. I put on everything in the drama - I was indiscriminate. I put on Yeats and Shaw and Lady Gregory.

When a man has written a role for you that you admire, the expectations are higher.

Script for an actor is like a bible. You carry it with you, you read it over and over, you go to your passages.

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

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.

A play is a passion.

Acting is something I love to do. I love to perform and I love the art, the craft of it.

I always wanted to tell stories and act.

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

I love a mask. It's why I've got a thing about good writing. When you're acting, you're going into someone else's work. You're behind his words; it's not you.

Movies have takes. But plays are like life - you don't really get takes.

I'd like to do plays, maybe a one man show.

I'm inspired every time I see a role I'd like to play, an actor turn in a well crafted performance, a story I'd like to tell, direct or produce.