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" Before I was 5, I did have a lot of time on my hands. I had no job and really no career, and I spent an awful lot of time listening to records. It was more the classical ones, really - Prokofiev, and I think there was some Mozart in there, and more impressionistic composers like Delius. "

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" For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence. "

Wallace Shawn

Writing

Write

" 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. "

" I have been vain since birth. "

" My plays have been strange from the beginning, and they never got unstrange. "

" I spend most of my time thinking about things like laundry and buying stationery supplies. "

Wallace Shawn

Thinking

Laundry

" 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. "

" Contrary to the popular misconception, the actor is not necessarily a specialist in imitating or portraying what he knows about other people. On the contrary, the actor may simply be a person who's more willing than others to reveal some truths about himself. "

Wallace Shawn

Others

May

" I do things, and other people laugh at them. I rarely know what the joke is supposed to be or why they're laughing. "

" 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

Never

Thinking

" 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. "

" I have more free time than a lot of individuals, so, instead of talking, I sometimes write. "

Wallace Shawn

Time

Free

" I'm a very lucky man. It's a beautiful thing for a writer, to see people allowing your words to enter their own unconscious and their souls. "

" 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. "

" 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

I Am

Find

" 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

Thought

People

" I led the life of an intellectual up until a certain age. I remember Freud's 'Interpretation of Dreams' was a big favorite when I was 11. It sounded so interesting. And it really was! "

" 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. "

" 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

Schedule

You

" I never planned to be an actor. It turned out I could make a living doing it. "

" 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. "

" 'The Fever' is a one-person play. I decided I would perform it myself, and I decided I would not perform it in theaters, because the character in the play says certain things that I meant. "

" 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. "

" I have an enormous appetite to see life as I know it presented in front of my eyes. "

" 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. "

" I don't have a television, and I'm just not too up on television. "

" As writers, we can't predict who might come along who might find our offerings valuable. "

" When I was first starting to write plays, I quite literally had never heard of the idea of studying playwriting. I wouldn't have studied it even if I had heard of it. "

" My personal life is lived as 'me,' but my professional life is lived as other people. In other words, when I go to the office, I lie down, dream, and become 'someone else.' That's my job. "

Wallace Shawn

Words

People

" 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. "

" Acting is an escape from the boring person that I am in real life. "