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

More quotes by 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 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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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.
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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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.
Wallace Shawn
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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.
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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My style as a human being is to indulge people who need to escape, yet I insist on confronting them as a playwright. It's quite embarrassing, it's quite unpleasant, it's quite awkward.
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
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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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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.
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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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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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 have been vain since birth.
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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I have more free time than a lot of individuals, so, instead of talking, I sometimes write.
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 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 have been vain since birth. I expected other people to like what I did, although my vanity has definitely diminished over the years.
Wallace Shawn