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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
Over
Years
Vanity
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" The life of an actor can be very enviable. "
Wallace Shawn
Life
Actor
Enviable
" 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
Chocolate
Tea
Someone
" 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
Me
" I spend most of my time thinking about things like laundry and buying stationery supplies. "
Wallace Shawn
Thinking
Laundry
Like
" I'm afraid that the passage of time is mostly lost on me. If you were to open up my head you would see that I'm still brooding about statements, songs and issues from the third grade. The years between 1980 and today went by very, very quickly. "
Wallace Shawn
Today
See
Me
" 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. "
Wallace Shawn
Roller Coaster
Ride
Circle
" I know that I am one and I've made a living as an actor and I enjoy being an actor, but when I'm not actually doing it, I forget that I do it. "
Wallace Shawn
Living
Know
I Am
" '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. "
Wallace Shawn
Play
Things
Character
" I don't have a television, and I'm just not too up on television. "
Wallace Shawn
Just
Too
Television
" 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
Child
Myself
Own
" 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
Once
Never
Carry
" I choose parts because I don't want to be embarrassed when the movie comes out. What if my friends were to see the movie? What if my niece or nephew wandered into the theater and saw the movie? I don't want to be too ashamed of it. "
Wallace Shawn
Want
Nephew
Choose
" 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
Acting
Building
Trying
" 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
Me
Words
People
" 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
More
" There's nothing regular about my life at all, really. I don't keep a regular schedule and every day is different. It's all rather chaotic. "
Wallace Shawn
Nothing
My Life
Life
" In my early 20s, I studied history and politics, and I really thought that perhaps I would devote my life to that. "
Wallace Shawn
Early
Politics
My Life
" 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
Advice
Out
Reality
" I don't see that many plays, and for me, musicals are rarely pleasing. "
Wallace Shawn
Pleasing
Me
Many
" I never planned to be an actor. It turned out I could make a living doing it. "
Wallace Shawn
Never
Actor
Doing
" 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
More
May
" Acting is an escape from the boring person that I am in real life. "
Wallace Shawn
Escape
I Am
Life
" In my mind, the plays I was writing were extreme examples of art for art's sake. I didn't necessarily think that other people would love them, though I thought they probably would. "
Wallace Shawn
Mind
Love
People
" 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
Change
Keep
Think
" 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
Country
Love
Someone
" I do things, and other people laugh at them. I rarely know what the joke is supposed to be or why they're laughing. "
Wallace Shawn
People
Why
Things
" After being in one movie, it didn't seem like that would be my life. I had done several jobs, briefly. I'd been a shipping clerk, I worked in a copy shop, I didn't think the acting was going to go on and on. "
Wallace Shawn
Life
Done
Acting
" My plays have been strange from the beginning, and they never got unstrange. "
Wallace Shawn
Strange
Never
Got
" 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
Live
Person
Think
" I have an enormous appetite to see life as I know it presented in front of my eyes. "
Wallace Shawn
Front
Know
Life