Sam Shepard Quotes

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

Hollywood is geared toward teenage idiocy. ~ Sam Shepard

I'm inhabiting a life I'm not supposed to be in ... and at certain times in my life, I have felt a wrongness. And not a moral wrongness but a sense that this isn't what I was born to be doing. ~ Sam Shepard

I've been so spoiled in the theater, writing plays where I can just do exactly what I want and nobody messes with me. ~ Sam Shepard

I've been off drugs and booze since I almost killed myself on speed two weeks ago. But my gratitude for being alive can't last for ever. ~ Johnny Dark

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

Words are tools of imagery in motion, ~ Sam Shepard

My dad had a lot of bad luck. You could see his suffering, his terrible suffering, living a life that was disappointing and looking for another one. ~ Sam Shepard

[ELLA] Oh! You know what Wes?

[WESLEY] What?

[ELLA] That story your father used to tell about that eagle. You remember the whole thing?

[WESLEY] Yeah.

[ELLA] I remember he keeps coming back and swooping down on the shed roof and then flying off again. What else?

[WESLEY] I don't know.

[ELLA] You remember. What happens next?

[WESLEY] A cat comes.

[ELLA] That's right. A big tomcat comes. He jumps up on top of that roof to sniff around in all the entails or whatever it was.

[WESLEY] And that eagle comes down and picks up that cat in his talons and carries him screaming off into the sky.

[ELLA] And they fight. They fight like crazy in the middle of the sky. The cat's tearing his chest out, and the eagle's trying to drop him, but the cat won't let go because he knows if he falls he'll die.

[WESLEY] And the eagle's being torn apart in midair. The eagle's trying to free himself from the cat, and the cat won't let go.

[ELLA] And they come crashing down to earth. Both of them come crashing down. Like one whole thing. ~ Sam Shepard

I don't get offered leading parts. I suppose I've become a kind of character actor or sideman. I think it had to do with probably in the '90s, I refused so many leading roles that they gave up on me, or I just became unpopular, or I became old. All those reasons. ~ Sam Shepard

It's one of the great tragedies of our contemporary life in America, that families fall apart. Almost everybody has that in common. ~ Sam Shepard

The funny thing about having all this so-called success is that behind it is a certain horrible emptiness. ~ 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

There's gonna be a general lack of toast in the neighborhood this morning. ~ Sam Shepard

Beginnings are definitely the most exciting, middles are perplexing and endings are a disaster. ~ Sam Shepard

people here have become the people they're pretending to be. ~ 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

Weston: Look at my outlook. You don't envy it, right?
Wesley: No.
Weston: That's because it's full of poison. Infected. And you recognize poison, right? You recognize it when you see it?
Wesley: Yes.
Weston: Yes, you do. I can see that you do. My poison scares you.
Wesley: Doesn't scare me.
Weston: No?
Wesley: No.
Weston: Good. You're growing up. I never saw my old man's poison until I was much older than you. Much older. And then you know how I recognized it?
Wesley: How?
Weston: Because I saw myself infected with it. That's how. I saw me carrying it around. His poison in my body. ~ 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

Love is the only disease that makes you feel better. ~ Sam Shepard

Being a writer is so great because you're literally not dependent on anybody. Whereas, as an actor, you have to audition or wait for somebody else to make a decision about how to use you, with writing, you can do it anywhere, anytime you want. You don't have to ask permission. ~ 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

Those are the most monotonous fuckin' crickets I ever heard in my life. ~ Sam Shepard

I had a definite sense of somehow being a passenger in an evil vehicle crusing through Paradise. ~ Sam Shepard

I feel like I've never had a home, you know? I feel related to the country, to this country, and yet I don't know exactly where I fit in ... There's always this kind of nostalgia for a place, a place where you can reckon with yourself. ~ Sam Shepard

On stage, you're not limited at all because you're free in language: language is the source of the imagination. You can travel farther in language than you can in any film. ~ Sam Shepard

The words I overuse are all adverbs. ~ Sam Shepard

I feel like the writers that I'm drawn to, the writers that I really cling to, are the writers who seem to be writing out of a desperate act. It's like their writing is part of a survival kit. Those are the writers that I just absolutely cherish and carry with me everywhere I go. ~ Sam Shepard

Personality is everything that's false in a human: everything that's been added on to him and contrived. ~ 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 never considered myself a movie star, and I didn't want to become a movie star, because as soon as you do, you throw away that possibility of playing character. You really do. All of a sudden you're just an entity, you know? ~ 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

I went to drama school at NYU for serious acting. So I was doing Chekov and Sam Shepard plays. ~ Casey Wilson

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

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. ~ 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

I'm a great believer in chaos. I don't believe that you start with a formula and then you fulfill the formula. Chaos is a much better instigator, because we live in chaos - we don't live in a rigorous form. ~ Sam Shepard

....and in that wink I understood there might be grown men in this world who actually get a spark out of life. ~ 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

My first plays were amazingly bad, but I had a teacher who thought I had promise, and he kept working with me. I finally went to a summer workshop before my senior year with people like Sam Shepard and Maria Irene Fornes who encouraged me to write from my subconscious, and suddenly all this material about culture clash came out. ~ David Henry Hwang

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

I'll develop my own image. I'm an original man. A one and only. I just need some help. ~ Sam Shepard

You don't have to take it out on my typewrite ya' know. It's not the machine's fault that you can't write. It's a sin to do that to a good machine. ~ 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

When I moved to New York out of college, that was my goal. To be a stage actress. And to do dramatic works. Like 'Madea', and 'Night, Mother', and 'Sam Shepard', and all that kind of stuff. That's what I really wanted to do. ~ Rachael Harris

I've heard writers talk about "discovering a voice," but for me that wasn't a problem. There were so many voices that I didn't know where to start. ~ 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

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

VINCE: We'd never make it. We'd drive and we'd drive and we'd drive and we'd never make it. We'd think we were getting farther and farther away. That's what we'd think. ~ Sam Shepard

When you hit a wall – of your own imagined limitations – just kick it in. ~ Sam Shepard

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. ~ Sam Shepard

I believe in my mask
The man I made up is me
I believe in my dance
And my destiny ~ Sam Shepard

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. ~ Sam Shepard

As a kid, I was really into performing. I would do choruses, I would do musicals, whatever it was. And then, as a teenager, I got into an acting class at SUNY Purchase for gifted kids, and that really turned me on to material beyond musicals, Sam Shepard, and Christopher Durang plays. ~ Matisyahu

I was shot in the wrist when I was a kid. Deliberately. ~ Sam Shepard

You can't believe people when they look you in the eyes. You gotta' look behind them. See what they're standing in front of. What they're hiding. Everyone's hiding, Wes. Everybody. Nobody look like what they are. ~ Sam Shepard

When you write a play, you work out like a musician on a piece of music. You find all the rhythms and the melody and the harmonies and take them as they come. ~ 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

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

Character is an essential tendency. It can be covered up, it can be messed with, it can be screwed around with, but it can't be ultimately changed. It's the structure of our bones, the blood that runs through our veins. ~ Sam Shepard

You can't make a living as a playwright. You can barely scrape by. ~ Sam Shepard

I've come to feel that if I can't make something happen in under an hour and a half, it's not going to happen in a compelling way in a three-hour play. ~ 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

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

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

I don't want to be a playwright, I want to be a rock and roll star. ~ Sam Shepard

He pictured both cities simultaneously, as though they hung on the extended arms of the orange clouds. Suspended. Tiny San Francisco dangling to the north: innocent, rich and a little bit silly. The sprawling, demented snake of L.A. to the south. Its fanged mouth wide open, eyes blazing, paralyzed in a lunge of pure paranoia. This was the place to be, he thought. Right here. In the middle. Smack in the belly of California where he could eyeball both from a distance. He could live inside the intestines of this valley while he spied on the brain and the genitals. ~ 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

My old man tried to force on me a notion of what it was to be a 'man.' And it destroyed my dad. ~ Sam Shepard

Ideas emerge from plays, not the other way around. ~ Sam Shepard

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. ~ Sam Shepard

When you're looking for someone, you're looking for some aspect of yourself, even if you don't know it ... What we're searching for is what we lack. ~ Sam Shepard

I don't have much to compare it to because I really didn't know much about theater. After I signed on, I started reading a lot of Sam Shepard plays just to brush up on my history and do some research. What's great is that Sam's been here and he's been in rehearsals with us. Sometimes you don't even notice him come in; he's just sitting there in the theater seats watching you. ~ Taissa Farmiga

I think without writing I would feel completely useless. ~ Sam Shepard

I still haven't gotten over this thing of walking down the street and somebody recognizing you because you've been in a movie. There's this illusion that movie stars only exist in the movies. And to see one live is like seeing a leopard let out of the zoo. ~ Sam Shepard

I think a part of the reason that those early plays were short was that I just kept having these ideas, and I'd just go off and write them. I wasn't trying to write one-act plays - it's just how the ideas would be expressed. Every condition I was in seemed like it could be a play. ~ Sam Shepard

Star, pillows don't attack dogs," Sam said.
"Or anything else," Turtle added. ~ Jennifer Priester

I feel like regardless of whether or not I win this award or I win that award or I don't win this award - I'm still Sam at the end of the day. And that's what defines me. ~ Sam Bradford

Sammy suns?" Sam laughed derisively. "They might as well be candles. ~ Michael Grant

The narcissist cannot admit that he had toiled and sweated to achieve his goal and, with this confession, shatter his alleged omnipotence and grandiose False Self. He must belittle every accomplishment of his and make it appear to have been a routine triviality. This is intended to support the dreamland quality of his fragmented personality. But it also prevents him from deriving the psychological benefits which usually accrue to to goal attainment…
The narcissist is doomed to roam a circular labyrinth. When he does achieve something, he underestimates it in order to enhance his own sense of omnipotence, perfection, and brilliance. When he fails, he dare not face reality. He escapes to the land of no narratives where life is nothing but a meaningless wasteland. The narcissist whiles his life away. ~ Sam Vaknin

I wanted to be famous. So famous that I would be vehemently hated by all the people I admired most. ~ Sam Harris

I thought you lot brought a buildin' down on 'is 'ead."
"We did," Sam replied before she could. "I don't think it took. ~ Kady Cross

It's in that tradition that we're here today, and we look to soup because there's no force on the globe that brings people together on a daily basis with the same consistency and manner than the cultivation, preparation and eating of food. Food affords us the opportunity to touch everyone in our community, to address the needs of all groups - food is the intersection of the most pressing issues of our time. ~ Sam Kass

We are all prisoners of our thoughts. ~ Sam Harris

I assure you I will not kill you," said Inigo.
"I know that," said Vimes. "But will you try? ~ Terry Pratchett

I don't worry about terrorism. I was married for two years. ~ Sam Kinison

Despite great advances in women's rights, statistics show that when it comes to the balance of power between the sexes, equality is far from being a global reality. ~ Sam Taylor-Johnson

How much tragedy has to happen before I split wide open?
Sam Hughes ~ Alisa Mullen

You could touch for a couple of bucks. The window of the booth went up and you stuck out the bills. They might tell you not to pinch, but I was a stroke type anyway. Some guys, I guess they want to leave a mark. Me, I just like the feel. ~ Sam Lipsyte

I was a big music fan, but I never bought a bunch of records or was very educated, I guess, on who was who or what was what. ~ Sam Hunt

Presidents have a right to certain prerogatives, including the expectation of a certain deference. He's the president; this is history. But we seem to have come a long way since Ronald Reagan was regularly barked at by Sam Donaldson, almost literally, and the president shrugged it off. ~ Peggy Noonan

Sometimes there's other reason for helping, other than personal gain or benefit," added Sam softly. "Friendship, companionship, trust and love are not confined to light alone ... they are harder won, fewer seen ... but no less real. ~ Eve Forward

Without a doubt, Ozzy is the craziest person I've ever met. Son of Sam is a close second. ~ Geezer Butler

Be positive in every instance! ~ Anyaele Sam Chiyson

If a lot of people gripped a knife and fork the way they do a golf club, they'd starve to death. ~ Sam Snead

Burnout is nature's way of telling you, you've been going through the motions your soul has departed; you're a zombie, a member of the walking dead, a sleepwalker. False optimism is like administrating stimulants to an exhausted nervous system. ~ Sam Keen

Poetry restores language by breaking it, and I think that much contemporary writing restores fantasy, as a genre of writing in contrast to a genre of commodity or a section in a bookstore, by breaking it. Michael Moorcock revived fantasy by prying it loose from morality; writers like Jeff VanderMeer, Stepan Chapman, Lucius Shepard, Jeffrey Ford, Nathan Ballingrud are doing the same by prying fantasy away from pedestrian writing, with more vibrant and daring styles, more reflective thinking, and a more widely broadcast spectrum of themes. ~ Michael Cisco

Some days the competition would beat me and I'd go home thinking awful thoughts, want to hide under the bed, depressed. But of course, in the news business, when you're working a daily news broadcast, you get your victories and defeats every day. ~ Sam Donaldson

People, more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed. ~ Sam Levenson

L.A. is my office. I come here for work and work only. ~ Sam Claflin