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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.

Sam Shepard

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Sam Shepard
Age: 73 †
Born: 1943
Born: November 5
Died: 2017
Died: July 27
Actor
Author
Autobiographer
Dramaturge
Film Actor
Film Director
Percussionist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Theatrical Director
Fort Sheridan
Illinois
Samuel Shepard Rogers III
Samuel Sam Shepard Rogers III
Play
Beyond
First
Started
Writing
Went
Kind
Sort
Really
Write
Failed
Didn
Wherever
Wanted
Dialogue
Firsts
Structure

More quotes by Sam Shepard

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The funny thing about having all this so-called success is that behind it is a certain horrible emptiness.
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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.
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I didn't go out of my way to get into this movie stuff. I think of myself as a writer.
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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.
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I had a definite sense of somehow being a passenger in an evil vehicle crusing through Paradise.
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I was shot in the wrist when I was a kid. Deliberately.
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I'll develop my own image. I'm an original man. A one and only. I just need some help.
Sam Shepard
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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.
Sam Shepard
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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.
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There are places where writing is acting and acting is writing. I'm not so interested in the divisions. I'm interested in the way things cross over.
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I think without writing I would feel completely useless.
Sam Shepard
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When you die it's the end of your life.
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I like cars. I like travel. I like the idea of people breaking down and I'm the only one who can help them get on the road again. It would be like being a magician. Just open up the hood and cast your magic spell.
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It's one of the great tragedies of our contemporary life in America, that families fall apart. Almost everybody has that in common.
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Words are tools of imagery in motion.
Sam Shepard
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When you're looking for someone, you're looking for some aspect of yourself, even if you don't know it ... What we're searching for is what we lack.
Sam Shepard
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When you hit a wall – of your own imagined limitations – just kick it in.
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Sides are being divided now. It's very obvious. So if you're on the other side of the fence, you're suddenly anti-American. It's breeding fear of being on the wrong side.
Sam Shepard
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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?
Sam Shepard
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I've heard writers talk about discovering a voice, but for me that wasn't a problem. There were so many voices that I didn't know where to start.
Sam Shepard