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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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Wallace Shawn
Age: 80
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
Actually
Enjoy
Donne
Enough
Awfully
Something
Enjoyable
Offering
Clever
John
Wasn
More quotes by Wallace Shawn
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
I have been vain since birth.
Wallace Shawn
I spend most of my time thinking about things like laundry and buying stationery supplies.
Wallace Shawn
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
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
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
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
Acting is an escape from the boring person that I am in real life.
Wallace Shawn
Who says one instance of writing has anything in common with another instance?
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.
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.
Wallace Shawn
You know, I haven't written as much as most other writers. Certainly maybe those who keep a more regular schedule accomplish more.
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.
Wallace Shawn
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
'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
I'm not proud to be me, I'm not excited to be me, but I find that I am me, and like most other individuals, I send out little signals I tell everyone else how everything looks from where I am.
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.
Wallace Shawn
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
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
I have more free time than a lot of individuals, so, instead of talking, I sometimes write.
Wallace Shawn