Sam Shepard Quotes
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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.
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All of the great writers whom I admire have died. I guess the most recent one would be Marquez.
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I think without writing I would feel completely useless.
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I don't attend costume parties.
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I remember, as a kid, going into other people's houses. Everything was different. The smells in the kitchen were different; the clothing was different. That bothered me. There's something very mysterious about other families and the way they function.
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I keep my horses out in the open, but when I was working the ranches, I had to clean the stalls. It was a horrible job.
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I'm still very much a believer in the spontaneity of certain kinds of writing. But then you have to eventually, when you're writing a long play, make adjustments along the way - all kinds of adjustments.
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If you start trying to figure out yourself from the image everyone has of you, you run into a dead end.
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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.
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I'm extremely grateful that I found writing, but it doesn't make it any more peaceful.
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Why would you want to be be counseled in your grief? It's too private.
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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.
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My old man tried to force on me a notion of what it was to be a 'man.' And it destroyed my dad.
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Film is anti-language.
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Hats look exactly the same. There's no difference between The Writing Hat and The Acting Hat.
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I love Levon Helm - he's one of my favorite guys.
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Men lie all the time.
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To sit on a ranch horse that's been broken in, it's like getting in a Porsche.
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It's funny, in a way the actor is a writer. It's not like the two things are so separate as to be like apples and oranges. The writer and the actor are one.
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When I first started, I didn't really know how to structure a play.
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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.
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I'm a writer. The more I act, the more resistance I have to it. If you accept work in a movie, you accept to be entrapped for a certain part of time, but you know you're getting out. I'm also earning enough to keep my horses, buying some time to write.
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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.'
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Film acting is really the trick of doing moments. You rarely do a take that lasts more than 20 seconds. You really earn your spurs acting onstage. I needed to do that for myself. I would hate to say at the end of everything that I never did a stage play.