There is this aura that the three-act play is the important one: it's the one that you do to win the Pulitzer.… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
When I first started, I didn't really know how to structure a play. I could write dialogue, but I just sort of… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
When you write a play, you work out like a musician on a piece of music. You find all the rhythms and… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
What I'm after is something different than supplying people with the idea that I'm writing an important play. — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
In many of my plays, there was a kind of autobiographical character in the form of a son or young man. The… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
For me, playwriting is and has always been like making a chair. Your concerns are balance, form, timing, lights, space, music. If… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
Film acting is really the trick of doing moments. You rarely do a take that lasts more than 20 seconds. You really… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
I think a part of the reason that those early plays were short was that I just kept having these ideas, and… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
Ive been so spoiled in the theater, writing plays where I can just do exactly what I want and nobody messes with… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
I'm still very much a believer in the spontaneity of certain kinds of writing. But then you have to eventually, when you're… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
To sing a song is quite different than to write a poem. I'm not and never will be a novelist, but to… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
I've come to feel that if I can't make something happen in under an hour and a half, it's not going to… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
Writing for the theatre is so different to writing for anything else. Because what you write is eventually going to be spoken.… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
I wanted to write a play about double nature ... one that wouldn't be symbolic or metaphorical or any of that stuff.… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
It's hard to explain why exactly, but I think that when I began writing plays, it was from an actor's point of… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
I guess what I like is mostly country & western or else stuff that has a real blues feel to it. — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
You can write 16 plays and not make as much money as you did doing one movie. — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
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… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
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… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
Why would you want to be be counseled in your grief? It's too private. — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
Farm country -- you know, hay, horses, cattle. It's the ideal situation for me. I like the physical endeavors that go with the farm… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
I think comedy's harder to pull off on the screen than on the stage, anyway. Tragedy is easier on the screen... oddly enough. — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
“Those are the most monotonous fuckin' crickets I ever heard in my life.” — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
I'll develop my own image. I'm an original man. A one and only. I just need some help. — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
When I just sit around my house and work, I can work two, three hours, and then I go off and ride a horse… — Sam Shepard Copy Share Image
