The 68+ Sam Shepard Quotes

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.

Ive Been So Spoiled In The Theater, Writing Plays Where I Can Just Do Exactly What I Want And Nobody Messes With Me.

I Was Shot In The Wrist When I Was A Kid. Deliberately.

My Dad's Side Of The Family ... They're A Real Bizarre Bunch, Going Back To The Original Colonies. That Side's Got A Real Tough Strain Of Alcoholism. It Goes Back Generations And Generations, So That You Can't Remember When There Was A Sober Grandfather.

I Didn't Go Out Of My Way To Get Into This Movie Stuff. I Think Of Myself As A Writer.

It's Hard To Explain Why Exactly, But I Think That When I Began Writing Plays, It Was From An Actor's Point Of View More Than Anything. I Had The Feeling That If You Put Yourself In The Position Of The Actor On Stage And Write From That Perspective, It Would Give You A Certain Advantage In Terms Of Being Inside Of The Play.

Caryl Churchill Is A Writer Of Some Note, But In The Sack, She Makes Me Explain Everything.

[rewriting Is] A Whole Other Art Form; It's About Craftsmanship.

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.

In Many Of My Plays, There Was A Kind Of Autobiographical Character In The Form Of A Son Or Young Man. The Purpose Of It, Of Course, Was To Write About Myself. That Character Was Always The Least Fully Realized. Eighteen Years Later, You Realize, That's What He Was About.

Hollywood Is Geared Toward Teenage Idiocy.

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.