Sam Shepard Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• 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

  Writing, Acting, Division

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

• 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

  Cute, Real, Writing

• 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

  Writing, Interesting, Crafts

  "Sam Shepard opens up". Interview with Carole Cadwalladr, www.theguardian.com. March 20, 2010.

• 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

  Country, Horse, Writing

• 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

  Writing, Light, Play

• 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

  Writing, Play, Firsts

• 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

  Writing, Decision, Waiting

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• 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

  Writing, Voice, Problem

• 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

  Writing, Character, Son

• [Rewriting is] a whole other art form; it's about craftsmanship.

  Sam Shepard

  Art, Writing, Crafts

• 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

  Morning, Jobs, Writing

• Ive been so spoiled in the theater, writing plays where I can just do exactly what I want and nobody messes with me.

  Sam Shepard

  Writing, Play, Want

• I'm a writer. The more I act, the more resistance I have to it. If you accept work in a movie, you accept to be entrapped for a certain part of time, but you know you're getting out. I'm also earning enough to keep my horses, buying some time to write.

  Sam Shepard

  Horse, Writing, Earning

• 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

  Writing, Thinking, Views

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• 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

  Song, Writing, Play

  "Sam Shepard plays with the Butch Cassidy myth" by Mark Olsen, www.latimes.com. October 09, 2011.

• When you consider all the writers who never even had a machine. Who would have given an eyeball for a good typewriter. Any typewriter. All the ones who wrote on a matchbook covers. Paper bags. Toilet paper. Who had their writing destroyed by their jailers. Who persisted beyond all odds.

  Sam Shepard

  Writing, Odds, Typewriters

• I think without writing I would feel completely useless.

  Sam Shepard

  Writing, Thinking, Useless

  "Sam Shepard opens up". Interview with Carole Cadwalladr, www.theguardian.com. March 20, 2010.

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