American - Playwright | November 5, 1943 - July 27, 2017
If you start trying to figure out yourself from the image everyone has of you, you run into a dead end.
Sam Shepard
YourselfStartEndTryingYouRun
I'm not a big fan of anniversaries.
BigBig FanFan
I've been into horses as far back as I can remember. There is a particular kind here in America called the 'quarter horse' that I'm very interested in.
AmericaHorseRememberBackI Can
Dialogue is like jazz. Dialogue is creative.
CreativeJazzDialogueLike
I stay away from heavy-handed stuff, the good guy and the bad guy. It just doesn't interest me; all it does is create more fences between people, I think.
GoodPeopleMeThinkBadCreate
All good writing comes out of aloneness.
GoodWritingOutGood Writing
Film acting is really the trick of doing moments. You rarely do a take that lasts more than 20 seconds. You really earn your spurs acting onstage. I needed to do that for myself. I would hate to say at the end of everything that I never did a stage play.
MyselfHateEndDoingMomentsYou
Democracy's a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it's no longer democracy, is it? It's something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism.
DemocracyCareTake CareYouStop
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.
FearFenceYouWrongNowSides
There's no way to escape the fact that we've grown up in a violent culture, we just can't get away from it, it's part of our heritage. I think part of it is that we've always felt somewhat helpless in the face of this vast continent. Helplessness is answered in many ways, but one of them is violence.
CultureFaceThinkViolenceHeritage
They say TV has a tendency to diminish actors, and I think that's probably true in the long run - it wears on 'em like bad dental work - but Cheech doesn't show any of the signs of being damaged that way. And as a man, he's fantastic.
WorkManThinkLongBadRun
It's very difficult to escape your background. You know, I don't think it's necessary to even try to escape it. More and more, I start to think that it's necessary to see exactly what it is that you inherited on both ends of the stick: your timidity, your courage, your self-deceit, and your honesty - and all the rest of it.
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