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
The visible imperfections of hand-wrought goods, being honorific, are accounted marks of superiority in point of beauty, or serviceability, or both.
Thorstein VeblenRead
On film you put all your energies into a single glance.
Alan RickmanRead
One wanted, she thought, dipping her brush deliberately, to be on a level with ordinary experience, to feel simply that's a chair, that's a table, and yet at the same time, It's a miracle, it's an ecstasy.
Virginia WoolfRead
The artist usually sets out -- or used to -- to point a moral and adorn a tale. The tale, however, points the other way, as a rule. Two blankly opposing morals, the artist's and the tale's. Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper functions of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
D. H. LawrenceRead
I am working, but when one has ceased to do seascape, it is the devil afterward - very difficult; it changes at every instant, and here the weather varies several times in the same day.
Claude MonetRead
I want to make beautiful things, even if nobody cares.
Saul BassRead