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 MametRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art serves as a genuine expression of joy and wonder, rather than a means to showcase personal achievements.
David Mamet emphasizes that true art arises from a place of pure emotion and a selfless intention, motivating artists to create not for recognition or to flaunt their own virtues, but to convey deep feelings of joy and awe. This perspective suggests that the most authentic artistic expressions connect more profoundly with others when they stem from a genuine spirit rather than a desire for validation.
Themes
ArtExpressionJoySelflessnessCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
Utilizing this quote in an art exhibition to emphasize the emotional core of the artwork.
More from David Mamet
All quotes βMy alma mater is the Chicago Public Library. I got what little educational foundation I got in the third-floor reading room, under the tutelage of a Coca-Cola sign.
David MametRead
You know, young actors say all the time, 'Should I use my own life experience?' And my response is, 'What choice do you have?'
David MametRead
It's hard for a Jew of my generation, an American Jew, who is philo-Zionistic, not to romanticize Israel.
David MametRead
You can't write about history without writing about politics at some point. History is about movements of people. 'What is criminality and what is government' is a theme that runs through every history.
David MametRead
Every reiteration of the idea that nothing matters debases the human spirit.
David MametRead
Similar quotes
In the theater, while you recognized that you were looking at a house, it was a house in quotation marks. On screen, the quotation marks tend to be blotted out by the camera.
Arthur MillerRead
Designing is not a profession but an attitude. Design has many connotations. It is the organization of materials and processes in the most productive way, in a harmonious balance of all elements necessary for a certain function. It is the intergration of technological, social, and economical requirements, biological necessities, and the psychological effects of materials, shape, color, volume and space. Thinking in relationships.
Laszlo Moholy-NagyRead
How can even the best novelist or playwright invent someone like Augustus Caesar or Catherine the Great, Galileo or Florence Nightingale? How can screenwriters create better action stories or human dramas than exist, thousand upon thousand, throughout the many centuries of recorded history?
Margaret MacmillanRead
I try all night to play a pretty note.
Jimi HendrixRead
Prose is admittedly an art rooted in social intercourse, and a fiction writer is faster to find a common denominator with his cell mates than a poet is.
Joseph BrodskyRead
The only thing we are as actors are messengers. That's all we are. Correct? We are delivering the playwright's intention through the concept of the director. And I come on stage; if I feel confident in the role, then I give it away.
Patti LuponeRead