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I Feel Very Lucky And Privileged To Be A Writer. I Feel Lucky In The Sense That I Can Branch Out Into Prose And Tell Different Kinds Of Stories And Stuff. But Being A Writer Is So Great Because Youre Literally Not Dependent On Anybody.

-Sam Shepard

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I Feel Very Lucky

Sam Shepard

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I Feel Very Lucky And Privileged To Be A Writer. I Feel Lucky In The Sense That I Can Branch Out Into Prose And Tell Different Kinds Of Stories And Stuff. But Being A Writer Is So Great Because Youre Literally Not Dependent On Anybody.

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My Dad Had A Lot Of Bad Luck. You Could See His Suffering, His Terrible Suffering, Living A Life That Was Disappointing And Looking For Another One.

When You See The Way Things Deteriorate Before Your Very Eyes. Everything Running Down Hill. It's Kind Of Silly To Even Think About Youth.

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.

Democracy's A Very Fragile Thing. You Have To Take Care Of Democracy. As Soon As You Stop Being Responsible To It And Allow It To Turn Into Scare Tactics, It's No Longer Democracy, Is It? It's Something Else. It May Be An Inch Away From Totalitarianism.

I Didn't Go Out Of My Way To Get Into This Movie Stuff. I Think Of Myself As A Writer.

The Fantastic Thing About The Theatre Is That It Can Make Something Be Seen That's Invisible, And That's Where My Interest In Theatre Is- That You Can Be Watching This Thing Happening With Actors And Costumes And Light And Set And Language, And Even Plot, And Something Emerges From Beyond That, And That's The Image Part That I'm Looking For, That Sort Of Added Dimension.

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.

You Can’t Keep Messing Me Around Like This. It’s Been Going On Too Long. I Can’t Take It Anymore. I Get Sick Every Time You Come Around. Then I Get Sick When You Leave. You’re Like A Disease To Me.

I Believe In My Mask-- The Man I Made Up Is Me I Believe In My Dance-- And My Destiny

My Dad's Side Of The Family ... They're A Real Bizarre Bunch, Going Back To The Original Colonies. That Side's Got A Real Tough Strain Of Alcoholism. It Goes Back Generations And Generations, So That You Can't Remember When There Was A Sober Grandfather.

Character Is An Essential Tendency. It Can Be Covered Up, It Can Be Messed With, It Can Be Screwed Around With, But It Can't Be Ultimately Changed. It's The Structure Of Our Bones, The Blood That Runs Through Our Veins.

This Isn't Champagne Anymore. We Went Through The Champagne A Long Time Ago. This Is Serious Stuff. The Days Of Champagne Are Long Gone.

I Don't Understand My Feelings. I Really Don't. I Don't Understand How I Could Hate You So Much After So Much Time. How, No Matter How Much I'd Like To Not Hate You, I Hate You Even More. It Grows.

I'll Develop My Own Image. I'm An Original Man. A One And Only. I Just Need Some Help.

I Still Haven't Gotten Over This Thing Of Walking Down The Street And Somebody Recognizing You Because You've Been In A Movie. There's This Illusion That Movie Stars Only Exist In The Movies. And To See One Live Is Like Seeing A Leopard Let Out Of The Zoo.

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.

We're Being Sold A Brand New Idea Of Patriotism. It Never Occurred To Me That Patriotism Had To Be Advertised. Patriotism Is Something You Deeply Felt. You Didn't Have To Wear It On Your Lapel Or Show It In Your Window Or On A Bumper Sticker. That Kind Of Patriotism Does Not Appeal To Me At All.

Keep Away From Fantasy. Shake Off The Image.

Ideas Emerge From Plays, Not The Other Way Around.

Everyone Wants A Piece Of Land. It's The Only Sure Investment. It Can Never Depreciate Like A Car Or A Washing Machine. Land Will Double Its Value In Ten Years. In Less Than That. Land Is Going Up Every Day.

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.

Beginnings Are Definitely The Most Exciting, Middles Are Perplexing And Endings Are A Disaster.

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.

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All That Stuff About My Father And My Childhood Is Interesting Up To A Certain Point, But I Kind Of Capsized With The Family Drama A Long Time Ago. Now I Want To Get Away From That. Not That I Won't Return To It, But A Certain Element Has Been Exhausted, And It Feels Like Why Regurgitate All This Stuff?

People Talk About The 1960s In A Nostalgic Way, But To Me It Was Terrifying. People Were Getting Assassinated. There Was Vietnam. There Were Race Riots. It Felt Like Everything Was Going To Get Blown Up Sky-high. It Didn’t Feel Like Flower Power. It Felt Like Armageddon.

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I Had A Definite Sense Of Somehow Being A Passenger In An Evil Vehicle Crusing Through Paradise.

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.

She Refers To Her Past As The Time Before She Was "blown Away.

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The Words I Overuse Are All Adverbs.

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