Three Uses of the Knife Quotes

“The audience wants to be piqued, to be misled, to be disappointed at times, so that it can, finally, be fulfilled. The audience therefore needs the second act to end with a question.”
― David Mamet, Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama

“The anti-Stratfordians hold that Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare’s plays—it was another fellow of the same name, or of a different name. In this they invert the megalomaniacal equation and make themselves not the elect, but the superior of the elect. Barred from composing Shakespeare’s plays by a regrettable temporal accident, they, in the fantasy of most every editor, accept the mantle of primum mobile, consign the (falsely named) creator to oblivion, and turn to the adulation of the crowd for their deed of discovery and insight—so much more thoughtful and intellectual than the necessarily sloppy work of the writer.”
― David Mamet, Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama

“And there are plays – and books and songs and poems and dances – that are perhaps upsetting or intricate or unusual, that leave you unsure, but which you think about perhaps the next day, and perhaps for a week, and perhaps for the rest of your life.

Because they aren't clean, they aren't neat, but there's something in them that comes from the heart, and, so, goes to the heart.”
― David Mamet, Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama

“When you come into the theater, you have to be willing to say, "We're all here to undergo a communion, to find out what is going on in this world." If you're not willing to say that, what you get is entertainment instead of art, and poor entertainment at that.”
― David Mamet, Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama

“However much our quotidian cares consume us, our dreamtime is too valuable, and will be devoted to problems not susceptible to rational consideration.”
― David Mamet, Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama

“Today, as in ancient Rome, when all avenues of success have been traveled and all prizes won, the final prize is the delusion of godhead.”
― David Mamet, Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama

“And there are plays – and books and songs and poems and dances – that are perhaps upsetting or intricate or unusual, that leave you unsure, but which you think about perhaps the next day, and perhaps for a week, and perhaps for the rest of your life.

Because they aren't clean, they aren't neat, but there's something in them that comes from the heart, and, so, goes to the heart.

What comes from the head is perceived by the audience, the child, the electorate, as manipulative. And we may succumb to the manipulative for a moment because it makes us feel good to side with the powerful. But finally we understand we're being manipulated. And we resent it.

Tragedy is a celebration not of our eventual triumph but of the truth – it is not a victory but a resignation. Much of its calmative power comes, again, from that operation described by Shakespeare: when remedy is exhausted, so is grief.”
― David Mamet, Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama

“For we rationalize, objectify, and personalize the process of the game exactly as we do that of a play, a drama. For, finally, it is a drama, with meaning for our lives. Why else would we watch it?”
― David Mamet, Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama

“The problem play is a melodrama cleansed of invention.”
― David Mamet, Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama

“The power of the dramatist, and of the political flack therefore, resides in the ability to state the problem.”
― David Mamet, Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama