Wallace Shawn Quotations

I think I'm trying to write truthfully about life, and naturalism, or the way people normally talk in movies, is a convention. It's not the way people talk in life at all.

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.

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.

You know, I haven't written as much as most other writers. Certainly maybe those who keep a more regular schedule accomplish more.

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?

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

In terms of number of movies, I've been in an extraordinary amount. If you count only the minutes I'm onscreen, it's not so long.

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.

I am recognized a lot for Clueless, but I am recognized a great deal for The Princess Bride. I dont know... maybe everybody who has seen that movie just goes out on the street.

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.