David Mamet

I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly. I get up early in the morning and go to work. I love to write.

A stage play is basically a form of uber-schizophrenia. You split yourself into two minds - one being the protagonist and the other being the antagonist. The playwright also splits himself into two other minds: the mind of the writer and the mind of the audience.

I like Bach. I like Randy Newman.

I've always been more comfortable sinking while clutching a good theory than swimming with an ugly fact.

I'm greedy and ambitious like everybody else.

A liberal pretending to be a conservative? That's like a straight person pretending to be gay to get greater acceptance.

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.'

I'm afraid of only two things: being lazy and being cowardly.

My tendency as an actor was to correct people, was to say, 'What if we tried it this way, what about if we tried that way?' That's terrible habit for an actor, but that's a good habit for director. So I became a director.

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

I hate vacations. There's nothing to do.

I love all insider memoirs. It doesn't matter whether it's truck-drivers or doctors. I think everybody likes to go backstage, find out what people think and what they talk about and what specialised job they have.