While all playwrights employ dialogue as their primary artistic tool, Mamet is exceptional in that his dialogue often hides or reveals a character's true thoughts or attitudes toward the subject at hand. The dialogue in American Buffalo is representative of Mamet's work in that it is highly fragmentary, filled with asides and pauses, and captures the rhythms and nuances found in everyday speech. Comparing the play's dialogue to elevator music, Newsweek's Jack Kroll noted Mamet's ability to capture "the dissonant din of people yammering at each other and not connecting."