220 Quotes by Sam Shepard

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

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.

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

You sometimes use the excuse, 'I'm a writer, dammit, I can do anything I want,' but that doesn't work.

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.

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

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

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.

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.