Sam Shepard Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“When you hit a wall – of your own imagined limitations – just kick it in.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“Ideas emerge from plays, not the other way around.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“You can’t keep messing me around like this. It’s been going on too long. I can’t take it anymore. I get sick every time you come around. Then I get sick when you leave. You’re like a disease to me.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“There are places where writing is acting and acting is writing. I'm not so interested in the divisions. I'm interested in the way things cross over.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“This isn't champagne anymore. We went through the champagne a long time ago. This is serious stuff. The days of champagne are long gone.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“There's gonna be a general lack of toast in the neighborhood this morning.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“In real life we don't know what's going to happen next. So how can you be that way on a stage? Being alive to the possibility of not knowing exactly how everything is going to happen next - if you can find places to have that happen onstage, it can resonate with an experience of living.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“Everyone wants a piece of land. It's the only sure investment. It can never depreciate like a car or a washing machine. Land will double its value in ten years. In less than that. Land is going up every day.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“I hate endings. Just detest them. Beginnings are definitely the most exciting, middles are perplexing and endings are a disaster. … The temptation towards resolution, towards wrapping up the package, seems to me a terrible trap. Why not be more honest with the moment? The most authentic endings are the ones which are already revolving towards another beginning. That’s genius.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“The great thing for me, now, is that writing has become more and more interesting. Not just as a craft but as a way into things that are not described. It's a thing of discovering. That's when writing is really working. You're on the trail of something and you don't quite know what it is.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“I wanted to write a play about double nature ... one that wouldn't be symbolic or metaphorical or any of that stuff. I just wanted to give a taste of what it feels like to be two-sided. It's a real thing, double nature. I think we're split in a much more devastating way than psychology can ever reveal. It's not so cute. Not some little thing we can get over. It's something we've got to live with”
-- Sam Shepard -
“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.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“We're being sold a brand new idea of patriotism. It never occurred to me that patriotism had to be advertised. Patriotism is something you deeply felt. You didn't have to wear it on your lapel or show it in your window or on a bumper sticker. That kind of patriotism does not appeal to me at all.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“For me, playwriting is and has always been like making a chair. Your concerns are balance, form, timing, lights, space, music. If you don't have these essentials, you might as well be writing a theoretical essay, not a play.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“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 -
“I had a definite sense of somehow being a passenger in an evil vehicle crusing through Paradise.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“When you see the way things deteriorate before your very eyes. Everything running down hill. It's kind of silly to even think about youth.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“To sing a song is quite different than to write a poem. I'm not and never will be a novelist, but to write a novel is not the same thing as writing a play. There is a difference in form, but essentially what you're after is the same thing.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“My first job was with the Burns Detective Agency. They sent me over to the East River to guard coal barges during these god-awful hours like three to six in the morning. It wasn't a very difficult job -- all I had to do was make a round every fifteen minutes -- but it turned out to be a great environment for writing. I was completely alone in a little outhouse with an electric heater and a little desk.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“Farm country -- you know, hay, horses, cattle. It's the ideal situation for me. I like the physical endeavors that go with the farm -- cutting hay, cleaning out stalls, or building a barn. You go do that and then come back to the writing.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“I think without writing I would feel completely useless.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“When I first started, I didn't really know how to structure a play. I could write dialogue, but I just sort of failed beyond that, and kind of went wherever I wanted to go.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“I like cars. I like travel. I like the idea of people breaking down and I'm the only one who can help them get on the road again. It would be like being a magician. Just open up the hood and cast your magic spell.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“The California I knew, old rancho California, is gone. It just doesn't exist, except maybe in little pockets. I lived on the edge of the Mojave Desert, an area that used to be farm country. There were all these fresh-produce stands with avocados and date palms. You could get a dozen artichokes for a buck or something. Totally wiped out now.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“I was in the war. I know how to kill. I was over there. I know how to do it. I've done it before. It's no big deal. You just make an adjustment. You convince yourself it's all right. That's all. It's easy. You just slaughter them.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“The funny thing about having all this so-called success is that behind it is a certain horrible emptiness.”
-- Sam Shepard -
“All that stuff about my father and my childhood is interesting up to a certain point, but I kind of capsized with the family drama a long time ago. Now I want to get away from that. Not that I won't return to it, but a certain element has been exhausted, and it feels like why regurgitate all this stuff?”
-- 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 youre literally not dependent on anybody.”
-- 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 wasnt far enough.”
-- Sam Shepard
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