Sam Shepard Quotes
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I think comedy's harder to pull off on the screen than on the stage, anyway. Tragedy is easier on the screen... oddly enough.
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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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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.
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When I first started, I didn't really know how to structure a play.
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I always thought the desert was the antithesis of peace - something that attacks you. So you don't go to the desert for peace.
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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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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 don't attend costume parties.
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Film is anti-language.
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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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Hollywood is geared toward teenage idiocy.
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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'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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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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The wonderful thing about writing for theatre is you can go anywhere you want with the language. There are no limits. With film, they frown on language - it's always 'Too many words.'
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The words I overuse are all adverbs.
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I had two experiences with very close friends of mine who experienced aphasia, the loss of language. It shocked me.
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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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What I'm after is something different than supplying people with the idea that I'm writing an important play.
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I am always relaxed.
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I love Levon Helm - he's one of my favorite guys.
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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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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.
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It's very easy to lose language - it can be shut off in a second.