Wallace Shawn Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence.

  Wallace Shawn

  Writing, Thinking, Play

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

• Who says one instance of writing has anything in common with another instance?

  Wallace Shawn

  Writing, Common, Instance

• I don't have an idea for a play until after I've finished writing it. I write first, and come up with what it's about later. My technique could be compared to having a large canvas and coming in every day and putting a dot on it somewhere, and after several years - literally - I begin to say, That reminds me of an elephant, so I think I'll make it one.

  Wallace Shawn

  Writing, Thinking, Years

• I probably have a higher opinion of my writing than the average person, at least when I'm in a good mood, but I don't really think of my plays as only being relevant to a particular month or year.

  Wallace Shawn

  Writing, Thinking, Average

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

• What I'm really involved in when I'm writing is something that no one ever mentions when they see any play. Writing is like trying to make gunpowder out of chemicals. You have these words and sentences and the strange meanings and associations that are attached to the words and sentences, and you're somehow cooking these things all up so that they suddenly explode and have a powerful effect. That's what absorbs me from day to day in writing a play.

  Wallace Shawn

  Powerful, Writing, Play

• I have more free time than a lot of individuals, so, instead of talking, I sometimes write.

  Wallace Shawn

  Writing, Talking, Sometimes

  Wallace Shawn (2009). “Essays”, p.5, Haymarket Books

• I grew up in a very polite family, and I suppose my parents were both very polite, and from the time I was a young boy, I suspected that there were passions seething underneath and not being mentioned, and that was something that came to preoccupy me. Somehow I had some drive to write down what people might really be thinking.

  Wallace Shawn

  Passion, Writing, Boys

  Source: film.avclub.com

• I'm trying to write truthfully about life, and naturalism, or the way people normally talk in movies, is a convention. The way I write is about life and is quite truthful, and there is a kind of brutal side to the relationship, and to the feelings, that makes it somewhat painful, but I think it's a very intense portrait of the relationship of two people. And a bit about what people feel like when they're alone, because it all takes place in one day, and during the day, they spend a lot of time alone in their different - you get to imagine what their fantasy lives are like.

  Wallace Shawn

  Writing, Thinking, People

  Source: film.avclub.com

• I wrote my first play at the age of 10, 55 years ago, and I've always found it a fantastic relief to imagine I know what things would be like from the point of view of other individuals and to send out signals from where I actually am not. Playwrights never need to write from the place where they are.

  Wallace Shawn

  Writing, Views, Years

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

• All of my plays have puzzled some people, and I'm happy to say delighted a few, but a lot of people have just not seen how quite to look at them. And this film... if you like my writing, you'll like this film. If you don't, you won't like the film. It's pretty faithful to - it's a pretty uncompromising presentation of my way of seeing things, I suppose.

  Wallace Shawn

  Writing, People, Faithful

  Source: film.avclub.com

• I started writing plays in around 1967, and at a certain point, I thought, 'I'm writing plays, I should learn about acting and what it is.' So I went to the HB Studio in New York, and I was there for about nine months.

  Wallace Shawn

  New York, Writing, Play

  "Wallace Shawn juggles acting jobs and play writing". Interview with Dany Margolies, www.reuters.com. February 1, 2011.

• When I was first starting to write plays, I quite literally had never heard of the idea of studying playwriting. I wouldn't have studied it even if I had heard of it.

  Wallace Shawn

  Writing, Play, Ideas

  "Wallace Shawn juggles acting jobs and play writing". Interview with Dany Margolies, February 1, 2011.

• I think I'm trying to write truthfully about life, and naturalism, or the way people normally talk in movies, is a convention. It's not the way people talk in life at all.

  Wallace Shawn

  Writing, Thinking, People

  Interview with Nathan Rabin, www.avclub.com. April 1, 2009.

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin