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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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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
Helping
Solve
Problem
Gave
States
Writer
Permission
Really
Problems
Required
Think
Instead
Servant
Thinking
Grew
Civil
People
Help
Artistic
United
Began

More quotes by Wallace Shawn

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I was making my living from a joke about my appearance that I didn't understand, and in a way still don't, because when I look in a mirror it doesn't seem funny to me.
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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.
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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.
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My plays have been strange from the beginning, and they never got unstrange.
Wallace Shawn
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Sleep: a poor substitute for caffeine!
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 think the whole system of education would change if I were in charge and had the ability to make changes. I don't think I would keep Princeton exactly being Princeton.
Wallace Shawn
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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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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.
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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I don't have a television, and I'm just not too up on television.
Wallace Shawn
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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.
Wallace Shawn
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I never planned to be an actor. It turned out I could make a living doing it.
Wallace Shawn
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It's obviously a characteristic of human beings that we like to feel superior to others, but our problem is we are not superior
Wallace Shawn
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A play presents a self-enclosed little world for the audience to examine. It's an opportunity to look objectively at a group of people, to assess them, to react to them, and to measure oneself against them, to ask 'Am I like that?'
Wallace Shawn
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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.
Wallace Shawn
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I never grew up thinking, 'One day I will play so and so' because I wasn't expecting to be an actor at all.
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.
Wallace Shawn
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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.
Wallace Shawn