Top 200 David Mamet Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Put. That coffee. Down. Coffee’s for closers only.”

— David Mamet

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2. “Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance.”

— David Mamet

3. “Every fear hides a wish.”

— David Mamet

4. “Worry is interest paid in advance on a debt that never comes due...”

— David Mamet

5. “Always be closing.”

— David Mamet

6. “We all hope. It’s what keeps us alive.”

— David Mamet

7. “We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.”

— David Mamet

8. “Always tell the truth – it’s the easiest thing to remember.”

— David Mamet

9. “Everybody makes their own fun. If you don’t make it yourself, it isn’t fun. It’s entertainment.”

— David Mamet

10. “Invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school.”

— David Mamet

11. “Get into the scene late; get out of the scene early.”

— David Mamet

12. “Everyone needs money. That’s why they call it money.”

— David Mamet

13. “Do not internalize the industrial model. You are not one of the myriad interchangeable pieces, but a unique human being, and if you’ve got something to say, say it, and think well of yourself while you’re learning to say it better.”

— David Mamet

14. “What I value most in my friends is loyalty.”

— David Mamet

15. “The subject of drama is The Lie. At the end of the drama THE TRUTH – which has been overlooked, disregarded, scorned, and denied – prevails. And that is how we know the Drama is done.”

— David Mamet

16. “All drama is about lies. When the lie is exposed, the play is over.”

— David Mamet

17. “As you all know first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired.”

— David Mamet

18. “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.’”

— David Mamet

19. “Opportunity may knock, but it seldom nags.”

— David Mamet

20. “There is no such thing as character other than the habitual action, as Mr. Aristotle told us two thousand years ago.”

— David Mamet

21. “A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.”

— David Mamet

22. “The dream and the film are the juxtaposition of images in order to answer a question.”

— David Mamet

23. “They say you can’t study Kabbalah until you are at least 40 years old. You know why? You have to have experienced at least one generation making the same mistakes as the previous one.”

— David Mamet

24. “It’s not a lie. It’s a gift for fiction.”

— David Mamet

25. “Let the cut tell the story. Otherwise you have not got dramatic action, you’ve got narration.”

— David Mamet

26. “Our job, as writers is to do our jobs.”

— David Mamet

27. “Welcome to Chicago. This town stinks like a whorehouse at low tide.”

— David Mamet

28. “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.”

— David Mamet

29. “They say the definition of ambivalence is watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your new Cadillac.”

— David Mamet

30. “Anyone ever lost in the wild knows that nature wants you dead.”

— David Mamet

31. “We all die in the end, but there’s no reason to die in the middle.”

— David Mamet

32. “You want to get Capone? Here’s how you get him: he pulls a knife, you pull a gun, he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. It’s the Chicago way and that’s how you get Capone.”

— David Mamet

33. “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.”

— David Mamet

34. “The avant-garde is to the left what jingoism is to the right. Both are a refuge in nonsense.”

— David Mamet

35. “The purpose of technique is to free the unconscious. If you follow the rules ploddingly, they will allow your unconscious to be free.”

— David Mamet

36. “I hate vacations. There’s nothing to do.”

— David Mamet

37. “The study of acting consists in the main of getting out of one’s own way, and in learning to deal with uncertainty and being comfortable being uncomfortable.”

— David Mamet

38. “Forget narrative, backstory, characterisation, exposition, all of that. Just make the audience want to know what happens next.”

— David Mamet

39. “Don’t write stage directions. If it is not apparent what the character is trying to accomplish by saying the line, tell us how the character said it or whether or not she moved to the couch isn’t going to aid the case.”

— David Mamet

40. “Every scene should be able to answer three questions: “Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don’t get it? Why now?”

— David Mamet

41. “The main question in drama, the way I was taught, is always, ‘What does the protagonist want?’ That’s what drama is. It comes down to that. It’s not about theme, it’s not about ideas, it’s not about setting, but what the protagonist wants.”

— David Mamet

42. “It’s upsetting to be a man in our society.”

— David Mamet

43. “War is tragedy. The great war stories are tragedies. It’s the failure of diplomacy. ‘War and Peace,’ ‘A Farewell to Arms,’ ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls.’ Those are some of the greatest tragedies.”

— David Mamet

44. “All of us. All of us. We’re doomed.”

— David Mamet

45. “Art and mass entertainment and propaganda, they can all be plotted on the same graph, but there is a difference.”

— David Mamet

46. “My dad was an immigrant kid and a Democrat and a Jew, and we didn’t know any Republicans in our group. So I grew up Democratic. My dad was a labor lawyer – a very hardworking guy, a one-horse labor lawyer – and then I went to hippie college and lived in the bubble.”

— David Mamet

47. “Before you can steal fire from the Gods you gotta be able to get coffee for the director.”

— David Mamet

48. “Art is an expression of joy and awe. It is not an attempt to share one’s virtues and accomplishments with the audience, but an act of selfless spirit.”

— David Mamet

49. “There’s no such thing as talent; you just have to work hard enough.”

— David Mamet

50. “No one enjoys being equal.”

— David Mamet