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Wallace Shawn

Wallace Shawn Books

Actor

Wallace Shawn, born on November 12, 1943, is an American actor, playwright, and voice actor. He has made significant contributions to the stage and screen in Hollywood and on Broadway, known for his unique acting style and sense of humor.

Essays

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Aunt Dan and Lemon: A Play

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My Dinner With André

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Night Thoughts

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The Designated Mourner

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Writing Wrongs: The Work of Wallace Shawn

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Related Quotes

“Revenge and punishment both imply, “Even if I’d been you, and I’d had your life, I would never have done what you did.” And that in turn implies, “I wouldn’t have done it, because I’m better than you.” But the person who says, “I’m better than you” is taking a serious step in a very dangerous direction. And the person who says, “Even if I’d had your life, I would never have done what you did” is very probably wrong.”

Book:Night Thoughts

Source: Night Thoughts

“I've lived in this city all my life. I grew up on the Upper East Side. And when I was ten years old, I was rich, I was an aristocrat. Riding around in taxis, surrounded by comfort, and all I thought about was art and music. Now, I'm 36, and all I think about is money.”

Book:My Dinner With André

Source: My Dinner With André

“I don't know about you, but I only have one life, and I don't want to spend it in a sewer of injustice.”

Life Injustice Inequality Protest Occupy Wall Street Laura Flanders

Author:Wallace Shawn

“It is hard enough to make a plan for how you are going to spend an evening with somebody else. So to make a plan for how you are going to behave in 25 years seems based on a view of life that is incomprehensible to me.”

Years Hard Enough Seems Views Plans Evening Behave

Author:Wallace Shawn

“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.”

Kind Different Goes On Theater Circles Parks Carrie Entertaining Amusement Up And Down Roller Coaster Coasters Amusement Parks Roller Coaster Rides

Author:Wallace Shawn

“I choose parts because I don't want to be embarrassed when the movie comes out. What if my friends were to see the movie? What if my niece or nephew wandered into the theater and saw the movie? I don't want to be too ashamed of it.”

Ifs Want Saws My Friends Theater Ashamed What If Embarrassed Nephew Niece My Niece

Author:Wallace Shawn

“I am recognized a lot for Clueless, but I am recognized a great deal for The Princess Bride. I dont know... maybe everybody who has seen that movie just goes out on the street.”

Knows Deals Streets Princess Brides Clueless Princess Bride

Author:Wallace Shawn

“From being a writer of plays, it was not that surprising that somebody thought of giving me a job as an actor. After I played one part, others came along.”

Giving Play Jobs Actors Surprising

Author:Wallace Shawn

“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.”

People Thinking Should Looks Persons Views Determined

Author:Wallace Shawn

“In terms of number of movies, I've been in an extraordinary amount. If you count only the minutes I'm onscreen, it's not so long.”

Ifs Long Term Numbers Minutes Amount Extraordinary

Author:Wallace Shawn

“My plays have been strange from the beginning, and they never got unstrange.”

Has Beens Play Strange

Author:Wallace Shawn

“Patriotism is considered to be an emotion a person ought to feel. But why? Why is it nobler to love your own country than to love someone else's?”

Feels Persons Country Emotion Love You Ought Love Someone

Book:Essays

Source: Essays

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

Knows Written Havens Accomplish Schedules

Author:Wallace Shawn

“After being in one movie, it didn't seem like that would be my life. I had done several jobs, briefly. I'd been a shipping clerk, I worked in a copy shop, I didn't think the acting was going to go on and on.”

Thinking Done Seems Would Be Jobs Acting Goes On Shops Copies Clerks Shipping

Author:Wallace Shawn

“For some reason, people find me funny. It's quite hard to define why a thought is funny. It's even harder to define why a person would be funny. It's a word that I can't define at all. But whether I know quite what it is or not, I seem to be it.”

People Knows Persons I Can Hard Reason Seems Would Be Harder Find Me

Author:Wallace Shawn

“The life of an actor can be very enviable.”

Author:Wallace Shawn

“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.”

People Feels Wells Children Enough Feelings Reality Emotion Seeing Adults Complicated Upset Hiding Layers True Feelings Subterfuge Hiding Things

Author:Wallace Shawn

“Children, I always think, are just putting on a performance of being naive and not understanding anything. I have worked with children in films, and they're treated as adults and they just drop the pretense of being children.”

Thinking Children Film Understanding Adults Performances Treated Naive Pretense

Author:Wallace Shawn

“"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.”

Persons Play Character Certain Decided Theater Fever

Author:Wallace Shawn

“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.”

Should Writing Play Certain Acting New York Months Studios Nine Nine Months

Author:Wallace Shawn

“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.”

People Thinking States Helping Problem United United States Grew Grew Up Solve Artistic Servant Permission Civil Servants

Author:Wallace Shawn

“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.”

People Dream Jobs Life Is Lying Office Personal Life Professional Life

Book:Essays

Source: Essays

“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.”

Courses Actors Community Roles Fronts Cry Example Clothes Stranger Businessman

Author:Wallace Shawn

“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.”

People World Way Firsts Play Beautiful Film Found Exposed Frank Portraits Disturbing Bergman

Author:Wallace Shawn

“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.”

Different Schedules Chaotic

Author:Wallace Shawn

“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.”

Ifs Giving Reality Young Actors Results Advice Percent Scripts Auditions Scrap Young Actors

Author:Wallace Shawn

“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.”

Ifs Writing Firsts Ideas Play Study Heard Starting Playwriting Starting To Write

Author:Wallace Shawn

“I think I'm trying to write truthfully about life, and naturalism, or the way people normally talk in movies, is a convention. It's not the way people talk in life at all.”

People Thinking Way Writing Trying Conventions Naturalism

Author:Wallace Shawn

“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.”

People Trying Persons Two Play Reality Fighting Conversation Sitting Sells Intimacy Contradiction Far Away Away From You Blunt Always Fighting

Author:Wallace Shawn

“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.”

People I Can Reason Play Sides Psychological Subconscious

Author:Wallace Shawn

“What I'm really involved in when I'm writing is something that no one ever mentions when they see any play. Writing is like trying to make gunpowder out of chemicals. You have these words and sentences and the strange meanings and associations that are attached to the words and sentences, and you're somehow cooking these things all up so that they suddenly explode and have a powerful effect. That's what absorbs me from day to day in writing a play.”

Writing Trying Play Powerful Effects Strange Involved Cooking Sentences Chemicals Association Day To Day Gunpowder Play Writing

Author:Wallace Shawn

“I was clever enough to know that John Donne was offering something that was awfully enjoyable. I just wasn't clever enough to actually enjoy it.”

Knows Enough Enjoy Clever Offering Enjoyable Donne

Book:The Designated Mourner

Source: The Designated Mourner

“But because we've all been readers, we know what the experience is like, and we hope that what certain writers have given to us, we will give to someone.”

Knows Giving Certain Given Reader

Author:Wallace Shawn

“I grew up in a very polite family, and I suppose my parents were both very polite, and from the time I was a young boy, I suspected that there were passions seething underneath and not being mentioned, and that was something that came to preoccupy me. Somehow I had some drive to write down what people might really be thinking.”

People Thinking Writing Passion Parent Boys Polite Being Me

Author:Wallace Shawn

“I'm trying to write truthfully about life, and naturalism, or the way people normally talk in movies, is a convention. The way I write is about life and is quite truthful, and there is a kind of brutal side to the relationship, and to the feelings, that makes it somewhat painful, but I think it's a very intense portrait of the relationship of two people. And a bit about what people feel like when they're alone, because it all takes place in one day, and during the day, they spend a lot of time alone in their different - you get to imagine what their fantasy lives are like.”

People Thinking Writing Trying Kind Different Feelings Fantasy Imagine One Day Painful Intense Truthful Brutal Me Alone Naturalism

Author:Wallace Shawn

“All of my plays have puzzled some people, and I'm happy to say delighted a few, but a lot of people have just not seen how quite to look at them. And this film... if you like my writing, you'll like this film. If you don't, you won't like the film. It's pretty faithful to - it's a pretty uncompromising presentation of my way of seeing things, I suppose.”

People Writing Film My Way Faithful Uncompromising

Author:Wallace Shawn

“I have been vain since birth.”

Has Beens Birth Vain

Author:Wallace Shawn

“We are not what we seem. We are more than what we seem. The actor knows that. And because the actor knows that hidden inside himself there's a wizard and a king, he also knows that when he's playing himself in his daily life, he's playing a part, he's performing, just as he's performing when he plays a part on stage.”

Knows Play Seems Actors Stage Kings Performing Daily Life Wizards

Author:Wallace Shawn

“Acting is trying to be absolutely truthful; to get audiences to believe that you are a dean, when, actually, not only are you not the dean, but if you walked into the building they'd probably throw you out. That's very hard.”

Ifs Trying Believe Hard Acting Audience Building Truthful Dean

Author:Wallace Shawn

“I don't happen to have a sense of humor personally, so I don't know what's funny about a character... This happens to be a feature of my life generally.”

Knows Character Happens Features Sense Of Humor

Author:Wallace Shawn

“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.”

Thinking Writing Years Persons Play Opinion Particular Months Higher Average Mood Relevant Average Person Good Mood

Author:Wallace Shawn

“I see myself as a citizen of the planet. Even as a child, I always found it mindless to root for your own team. I was puzzled by the fact that people said their own team was better than other teams simply because it was theirs.”

People Children Said Facts Found Team Planets Citizens Roots Mindless Puzzled

Author:Wallace Shawn

“Acting is an escape from the boring person that I am in real life.”

Persons Real Acting Boring Real Life Boring Person

Author:Wallace Shawn

“And my singing, I don't think I could sing Wagner or opera, but I could probably carry a tune. I was in a musical once, but it was never performed.”

Thinking Singing Musical Tunes Opera Wagner

Author:Wallace Shawn

“As writers, we can't predict who might come along who might find our offerings valuable.”

Might Valuable Offering

Book:Essays

Source: Essays

“Even with my wife, I find sharing soup is hard.”

Hard Wife My Wife Soup

Author:Wallace Shawn

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

People Knows Laughing Jokes Supposed To Be

Author:Wallace Shawn

“I don't have a television, and I'm just not too up on television.”

Author:Wallace Shawn

“I don't see that many plays, and for me, musicals are rarely pleasing.”

Author:Wallace Shawn

“I have an enormous appetite to see life as I know it presented in front of my eyes.”

Knows Eye Fronts Enormous Appetite

Author:Wallace Shawn

About the Author

Born: November 12, 1943
Known for: Actor
Quotes: 78

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Books & Sources

EssaysRelated source material

Aunt Dan and Lemon: A PlayRelated source material

My Dinner With AndréRelated source material

Night ThoughtsRelated source material

The Designated MournerRelated source material

Writing Wrongs: The Work of Wallace ShawnRelated source material

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