David Mamet Quotes

I decided to make one of the most controversial songs that I could. I want to get under people's skin.

I never deliberately set out to shock, but when people don't walk out of my plays I think there is something wrong.

What's the use of being a writer if you can't irritate a great many people?

When I write, I disturb. When I show a film, I disturb. When I exhibit my painting, I disturb, and I disturb if I don't. I have a knack for disturbing.

I remember when I did 'Mrityudand' there was this big hoo-ha, and people were asking me why I was doing an art movie, and I would just tell them that, 'You know, what's the big deal, it's a movie.' I'm so glad that's a thing of the past.

I think you don't do work for controversy alone, and whenever you do new work which people don't understand and they say it is done to create controversy.

The reason I want to show shocking things is that they always pose an ethical question.

Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

It seems to me that the surest way to remove from the stage really undesirable plays, is for the public to refuse to go to see them. Censorship by law has always seemed to me too difficult and complicated where art of any kind is concerned.

In the late '80s, I think my vision was chasing people out of the room. Nobody else thought like this. I was really this pro-sex feminist.

If my stories make people uncomfortable, because it questions your set ideas and value systems that are convenient for a group of people or ideas that promote patriarchy and religious fanaticism, then my job as an artiste and a writer is done. The more you will cry foul, the louder my characters will speak.

If I choose to direct something, it's because I don't think it would get accepted.

Art has an obligation to offend

You have to remember the police used to raid and arrest the audience for seeing Scorpio Rising (1964), or Jack Smith movies. Wouldn't that be exciting today, if you see went to the movie and everyone at the IFC was arrested in a paddy wagon and taken away?

I curated this show [Shanghai Biennale ], I was by no means trying to shock people or be controversial.

I don't think that there's that much difference between a photograph of a fist up someone's ass and a photograph of carnations in a bowl.

No one has to come see my shows who doesn't like me talking about white Christians. They are free not buy a ticket. They're free to leave at any time. So I'm not imposing anything on anyone. Therefore I feel free to cross the line.

People want it to be red, like blood. It's kind of funny. When I used to throw meat into the audience, I'd get letters from kids' mothers saying, "What's the best way to get blood stains out of my son's shirt?"

When I found out after that first successful exhibition that the gallery wanted me to do another show like the first one, I come out two years later with four 6-foot drawings of classical nudes masturbating. The gallery director flipped the freak out!

I don't know why, but I always feel a kind of necessity to write things that are beyond acceptance, that are too offensive or something. For people to read them and say, Ha-ha-ha, very funny. No, we can't print that.

I had some people say to me, you don't - you wouldn't give air time to a holocaust denier. Why bother covering if [Donald Trump] tweet is totally crazy?

I mean look at Antichrist. He's not making films to be liked by everyone, so why is this so surprising coming from Lars von Trier?

When you do controversial work, you're going to upset a certain amount of people.

Anyone buying this book is going to be out a tidy sum if he is sucked in by the title. I wish I could write a real sexy book that would be barred from the mails. Apparently nothing whets a reader's appetite for literature more than the news that the author has been thrown into a federal pokey for disturbing the libido of millions of Americans.