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Sides are being divided now. It's very obvious. So if you're on the other side of the fence, you're suddenly anti-American. It's breeding fear of being on the wrong side.
Sam Shepard -
Writing for theatre is certainly different to writing an essay or any other kind of fiction or prose: it's physical. You're also telling a story, but sometimes the story isn't exactly what you intend; maybe you uncover something you had no idea you were going to uncover.
Sam Shepard
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I'm extremely grateful that I found writing, but it doesn't make it any more peaceful.
Sam Shepard -
Film is anti-language.
Sam Shepard -
There's no way to escape the fact that we've grown up in a violent culture, we just can't get away from it, it's part of our heritage. I think part of it is that we've always felt somewhat helpless in the face of this vast continent. Helplessness is answered in many ways, but one of them is violence.
Sam Shepard -
My son, Walker, has a band called The Dust Busters. You know, he plays banjo, fiddle, guitar, and mandolin, so a lot of my interest in that kind of music comes from him constantly listening to this stuff. He's taught me the history of it. It's remarkable how these young kids are now turned on to more traditional old-time music.
Sam Shepard -
I always thought the desert was the antithesis of peace - something that attacks you. So you don't go to the desert for peace.
Sam Shepard -
On every film, there are producers all over the place, and everyone's got to have an opinion. I think the screenplay is a beautiful form with great potential, but the environment around it is awful for a writer.
Sam Shepard
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I don't attend costume parties.
Sam Shepard -
I had two experiences with very close friends of mine who experienced aphasia, the loss of language. It shocked me.
Sam Shepard -
Hollywood is geared toward teenage idiocy.
Sam Shepard -
I love Levon Helm - he's one of my favorite guys.
Sam Shepard -
All of the great writers whom I admire have died. I guess the most recent one would be Marquez.
Sam Shepard -
I guess what I like is mostly country & western or else stuff that has a real blues feel to it.
Sam Shepard
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Writing for the theatre is so different to writing for anything else. Because what you write is eventually going to be spoken. That's why I think so many really powerful novelists can't write a play - because they don't understand that it's spoken - that it hits the air. They don't get that.
Sam Shepard -
When I was a kid, we didn't have a TV until the late '50s, but I can remember watching Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, Steve McQueen, and 'Gunsmoke.'
Sam Shepard -
What I'm after is something different than supplying people with the idea that I'm writing an important play.
Sam Shepard -
The words I overuse are all adverbs.
Sam Shepard -
It's very easy to lose language - it can be shut off in a second.
Sam Shepard -
People are starved for the truth, and when something comes along that even looks like the truth, people will latch onto it because everything's so false.
Sam Shepard
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I am always relaxed.
Sam Shepard -
After the falling out with my father, I worked on a couple of ranches - thoroughbred layup farms, actually - out toward Chino, California. That was fine for a little while, but I wanted to get out completely, and twenty miles away wasn't far enough.
Sam Shepard -
There is this aura that the three-act play is the important one: it's the one that you do to win the Pulitzer. Some part of you falls for that, and then after a while, you don't fall for that.
Sam Shepard -
I feel very lucky and privileged to be a writer. I feel lucky in the sense that I can branch out into prose and tell different kinds of stories and stuff. But being a writer is so great because you're literally not dependent on anybody.
Sam Shepard