Wallace Shawn Quotes

• You can go to a play that is enjoyable because it’s funny, and then on the next night you can go to a play that’s enjoyable because it’s ‘disturbing.’

  Wallace Shawn

  Topics in Funny

  Tags in Disturbing, Enjoyable

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Studying, Starting

• 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.

  Wallace Shawn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Respond, Disturbing

• When I was a child, I did always feel that people were hiding things, and that they weren’t expressing their true feelings. When adults are too complicated, and cover their emotions with layers of well-intentioned subterfuge, the child isn’t seeing reality clearly enough and gets upset.

  Wallace Shawn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Expressing, Hiding

• ‘The Fever’ is a one-person play. I decided I would perform it myself, and I decided I would not perform it in theaters, because the character in the play says certain things that I meant.

  Wallace Shawn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Theaters, Perform

• The actor’s role in the community is quite unlike anyone else’s. Businessmen, for example, don’t take their clothes off or cry in front of strangers in the course of their work. Actors do.

  Wallace Shawn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Strangers, Cry

• My personal life is lived as ‘me,’ but my professional life is lived as other people. In other words, when I go to the office, I lie down, dream, and become ‘someone else.’ That’s my job.

  Wallace Shawn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Lie, Professional

• My father was a jazz listener, and I think, at least before I was 5, I was not so into that. Although there were records that emphasized percussion that I liked, like Baby Dodds.

  Wallace Shawn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Emphasized, Listener

• In my mind, the plays I was writing were extreme examples of art for art’s sake. I didn’t necessarily think that other people would love them, though I thought they probably would.

  Wallace Shawn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Examples, Plays

• Interestingly, the actress who, in her own persona, may be gentle, shy, and socially awkward, someone whose hand trembles when pouring a cup of tea for a visiting friend, can convincingly portray an elegant, cruel aristocrat tossing off malicious epigrams in an eighteenth-century chocolate house.

  Wallace Shawn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Awkward, Interestingly

• In an amusement park, you can go on a roller coaster that carries you up and down, or you can go on another kind of ride that whirls you around in a circle. Similarly, there are different sorts of entertaining experiences in the theater.

  Wallace Shawn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Ride, Park

• If I had even the tiniest scrap of advice to give to a young actor who was figuring out how to audition, I would say don’t memorize the script… The reality about auditions is that 98 percent of the results has to do with what you are, not with what you did in the audition.

  Wallace Shawn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Audition, Tiniest

• I’m not proud to be me, I’m not excited to be me, but I find that I am me, and like most other individuals, I send out little signals; I tell everyone else how everything looks from where I am.

  Wallace Shawn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Looks, Proud

• I’m afraid that the passage of time is mostly lost on me. If you were to open up my head you would see that I’m still brooding about statements, songs and issues from the third grade. The years between 1980 and today went by very, very quickly.

  Wallace Shawn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Passage, Grade

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Fantastic, Signals

• I think the whole system of education would change if I were in charge and had the ability to make changes. I don’t think I would keep Princeton exactly being Princeton.

  Wallace Shawn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Charge, Princeton

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Months, Acting

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Average, Month

• I led the life of an intellectual up until a certain age. I remember Freud’s ‘Interpretation of Dreams’ was a big favorite when I was 11. It sounded so interesting. And it really was!

  Wallace Shawn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Sounded, Interpretation

• I grew up. I began to think the United States had some problems that really required the help of artistic people to solve. And I gave myself permission to be a writer instead of a civil servant.

  Wallace Shawn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Permission, Solve

Wallace Shawn (61)

Birth:	12th November, 1943
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Actor, Playwriter

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Today's Anniversary - 21st November

Births

• 1870 - Mary Johnston
• 1844 - Ada Cambridge
• 1963 - Nicollette Sheridan
• 1943 - Philip Norman Bredesen Jr.
• 1937 - Marlo Thomas

Deaths

• 1958 - Mel Ott
• 1996 - Mohammad Abdus Salam
• 1945 - Robert Benchley
• 1926 - Joseph McKenna
• 1959 - Max Baer