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" My father was a jazz listener, and I think, at least before I was 5, I was not so into that. Although there were records that emphasized percussion that I liked, like Baby Dodds. "

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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

Know

Age

View

" We're in an emergency situation. The United States has become an absolutely terrifying country, and I would hope that I could participate in some way in stopping the horror and the brutality. "

" 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

" Children, I always think, are just putting on a performance of being naive and not understanding anything. I have worked with children in films, and they're treated as adults and they just drop the pretense of being children. "

" 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

" 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 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

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

" 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. "

" 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

" In my early 20s, I studied history and politics, and I really thought that perhaps I would devote my life to that. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 probably have a higher opinion of my writing than the average person, at least when I'm in a good mood, but I don't really think of my plays as only being relevant to a particular month or year. "

" 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. "

" 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 am recognized a lot for 'Clueless,' but I am recognized a great deal for 'The Princess Bride.' I don't know... maybe everybody who has seen that movie just goes out on the street. "

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

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

Wallace Shawn

Thinking

Laundry

" Even with my wife, I find sharing soup is hard. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When I was first exposed to the films of Ingmar Bergman, I found them frank and disturbing portraits of the world we live in, but that was not something that displeased me. They were beautiful. I thought people would respond to my plays the way I responded to Bergman's films. "

" 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. "