David Mamet Quotes

When I write, I never think of segments as chapters; I think of them as scenes. I always visualize them in my mind. Then I try to get the scene down on paper as closely as I can. That's the one thing that readers don't see - what you have in your mind. The reader can only see what you get on the page.

In a sense, the story, or poem or verse or whatever it is you're writing, you can kind of think of it as a kind of projectile. Imagine it is a kind of projectile which has been specially shaped to be aerodynamic, and that your target is the soft grey putty of the reader's brain.

Writing a tribe is fun. They have their own language, their own slang; they repeat it, and it becomes part of the texture of the play. For a writer, that's thrilling. That's when my pen flies.

Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.

I have friends who are capable of writing a very rough draft and then going back and embroidering - they're sort of the cathedral builders of fiction. I never really know what I'm doing, and all my pleasure's on the level of the line.

The written word is the basic of everything. Most important, the idea, and after that, the dialogue. You can rehash the dialogue as you go along, it 's disgraceful to have to do this, but now and again you have no choice.

I love reading and I love thinking - the reason that I love my books so much is that in order to write them I have to read and to think for years at a time about the same period of time.

Before you can write a novel you have to have a number of ideas that come together. One idea is not enough.

I like the story writing process. I usually use someone who has been trained for structure to take the story that I actually want, place those elements in the right places.

I don't write a play from beginning to end. I don't write an outline. I write scenes and moments as they occur to me. And I still write on a typewriter. It's not all in ether. It's on pages. I sequence them in a way that tends to make sense. Then I write what's missing, and that's my first draft.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

I've only ever taken a playwriting class, but I like creative writing and writing screenplays.

When you're writing plays, it's possible to believe you don't have any real world skill. When you're adapting, it is really all about the mechanics, so you feel closer to, I don't know, an accountant or someone who has a body of information. It's not all about temperament.

Composing means you have a beginning, middle and end and a fluidity to what you're doing.

Choosing to write a play is some kind of surrender. I don't make an outline. I sit and work, and suddenly the door opens, and out it comes.

I write in a pretty straightforward way. I kind of sit down at page one and start writing.

Writing a new play shouldn't be seen as a mystery belonging to a priesthood, but as a challenge, a technical challenge, just to get into it.

It was kind of enlightening to become a playwright.

Outlining is not writing. Coming up with ideas is not writing. Researching is not writing. Creating characters is not writing. Only writing is writing.

Something people say about acting is that acting is listening. But I think that writing is listening, too. That you really have to listen to what are they saying and what they're communicating to you. And so, a lot of it is just getting stuff down.

First and foremost, it's got to be on the page. It starts with the writing.

I do the same kind of rewriting that I do in the shorts that I do in long books - and that is a lot. The book really comes to life in the rewriting.

When you compose, it's like writing. You're like a writer. You just think all the time.

I would say, A, you can't really teach anyone how to write good characters, because it's something you have to teach yourself or already have innately in you as a storyteller, and, B, coming up with a good screenplay is a very, very small fraction of what it takes to be a good screenwriter.

I'm still learning so much with every play I write. So I wrestle with word choice, rhythm in final drafts. I think you have to be ruthless.