130 Quotes by Wallace Shawn

I was making my living from a joke about my appearance that I didn’t understand, and in a way still don’t, because when I look in a mirror it doesn’t seem funny to me.

You’re always fighting the contradiction between the supposed intimacy of a two-person conversation and the blunt reality that you’re trying to sell the play to people who are sitting maybe too far away from you.

There’s nothing regular about my life at all, really. I don’t keep a regular schedule and every day is different. It’s all rather chaotic.

You know, I haven’t written as much as most other writers. Certainly maybe those who keep a more regular schedule accomplish more.

I’m being mocked because I don’t live up to a socially determined view of what other people think a person should look like.

I do things, and other people laugh at them. I rarely know what the joke is supposed to be or why they’re laughing.

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.

I love going to plays. There’s a subconscious side to it, obviously-some people like to be spanked for XYZ psychological reasons, and I like to go to plays, and I can’t entirely explain why.

When I was first exposed to the films of Ingmar Bergman, I found them frank and disturbing portraits of the world we live in, but that was not something that displeased me. They were beautiful. I thought people would respond to my plays the way I responded to Bergman’s films.