Quote of the Day (David Mamet, on Writing as ‘A Torment or an Adventure’)

“I’m basically nuts. I sit by myself every day, most days, eight hours in this little room. It feels like either a torment or an adventure. The only way I can still the torment or appreciate the adventure is to write it down.”—American playwright, screenwriter, director and novelist David Mamet quoted in Sarah Weinman, “That’s the Chicago Way,” New York Magazine, Feb. 19-Mar. 4, 2018

Quote of the Day (David Mamet, on the Agony of Flopping)

“There’s nothing in the world more silent than the telephone the morning after everybody pans your play. It won’t ring from room service; your mother won’t be calling you. If the phone has not rung by 8 in the morning, you’re dead.”—Playwright David Mamet quoted in Andrew Goldman, “Always Be Changing: David Mamet Explains His Intellectual Shift to the Right. The Far Right,” The New York Times Magazine, May 29, 2011

Quote of the Day (David Mamet, on Drama)

“All drama is about lies. When the lie is exposed, the play is over.”—David Mamet, “We Can’t Stop Talking About Race in America,” The New York Times, September 13, 2009

The next time an anthology featuring playwright’s explanations of their work is completed—heck, the next time an essay collection about race in America is completed—David Mamet’s piece from this past weekend is going to be prominently featured, I’m sure.

Few people at this point know the cunning turns and bristling dialogue in Mamet’s upcoming play, Race. But, if it’s anything like his other work (notably Oleanna, a two-character faceoff on sexual harassment, in its Broadway debut this season, a mere 16 years after it opened elsewhere), it’s likely to be provocative, even incendiary.

For now, we have the Times piece, filled with all kinds of aphorisms-in-the-making, not only the above but this one: “Race, like sex, is a subject on which it is near impossible to tell the truth.”