220 Quotes by Sam Shepard

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.

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 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.

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.

You can’t make a living as a playwright. You can barely scrape by.

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

So they take off after each other straight into an endless black prairie. The sun is just comin’ down and they can feel the night on their backs. What they don’t know is that each one of ‘em is afraid, see. Each one separately thinks that he’s the only one that’s afraid. And they keep ridin’ like that straight into the night. Not knowing. And the one who’s chasin’ doesn’t know where the other one is taking him. And the one who’s being chased doesn’t know where he’s going.

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.

She refers to her past as the time before she was “blown away.