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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

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Wallace Shawn
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: November 12
Actor
Author
Character Actor
Film Actor
Playwright
Screenwriter
Television Actor
Voice Actor
Writer
New York City
New York
Wallace Michael Shawn
Wally Shawn
Play
Started
Writing
Went
Acting
Studio
Point
Plays
Learn
Studios
Around
Nine
Thought
York
Certain
Months

More quotes by Wallace Shawn

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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.
Wallace Shawn
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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.
Wallace Shawn
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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.
Wallace Shawn
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Sleep: a poor substitute for caffeine!
Wallace Shawn
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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
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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.
Wallace Shawn
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In real life, every person is the leading man or woman. We don't think of ourselves as supporting or character actors.
Wallace Shawn
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I sincerely believe that if Bush and Cheney recognized the full humanity of other people's mothers around the world, they wouldn't commit the crimes they commit.
Wallace Shawn
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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
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I don't see that many plays, and for me, musicals are rarely pleasing.
Wallace Shawn
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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.
Wallace Shawn
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Who says one instance of writing has anything in common with another instance?
Wallace Shawn
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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.
Wallace Shawn
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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
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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.
Wallace Shawn
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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.
Wallace Shawn
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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
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I don't see that many plays, and for me, musicals are rarely pleasing. I feel the actors are being put through a kind of nightmarish labor. They're like animals being forced to pull heavy carts of vegetables at incredible speeds.
Wallace Shawn
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'The Princess Bride' is by far the most popular film I've ever done. I don't think I'll ever top it.
Wallace Shawn
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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?
Wallace Shawn