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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the loneliness and silence that follows public criticism of one's work.
In this quote, David Mamet captures the profound isolation and despair that can accompany the aftermath of negative reviews, particularly in the realm of art and performance. The stark imagery of a silent telephone serves as a metaphor for the lack of support and validation an artist feels when faced with public rejection. It highlights the vulnerability that comes with creative expression and the harsh reality of not receiving the expected recognition after putting one's work out into the world.
Themes
SilenceTelephoneCriticismFailureArt
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the challenges artists face in their careers.
More from David Mamet
All quotes →My 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
Whatever colors you have in your mind, I'll show them to you and you'll see them shine.
Bob DylanRead
The history of architecture is the history of the struggle for light.
Le CorbusierRead
More than anything else, though, to anyone who would write about it, golf offers a four-hour drama in two acts, which becomes memorable even in the tape-recorded reminiscenses of old champs, and which - in the hands of someone like Herb Wind - can become a piece of war correspondence as artfully controlled as Alan Morehead's account of Gallipoli.
Alistair CookeRead
Guitar was just a hobby, but it seemed to me that the instrument had possibilities, not least of which was that there was no one else playing it. I could be, as it were, the best boy in an all-girls school.
Julian BreamRead
When I turned to writing fantasy, and writing for young people, it was joyous. It was like discovering an underground lake of ideas that went on forever.
Laini TaylorRead
Everything that happened to me as a child involved music. It was part of everyday life, as automatic as breathing.
Nina SimoneRead