Sam Shepard Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“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.”

“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.”

“Hollywood is geared toward teenage idiocy.”

“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.”

“I didn't go out of my way to get into this movie stuff. I think of myself as a writer.”

“I'm not in demand. I'm all washed up.”

“I always thought the desert was the antithesis of peace - something that attacks you. So you don't go to the desert for peace.”

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

“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.”

“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.”