You can write 16 plays and not make as much money as you did doing one movie.
— Sam Shepard
I'm extremely grateful that I found writing, but it doesn't make it any more peaceful.
Careers don't interest me. The only thing that interests me is continuing to be a poet on one level or another, whether acting or writing or directing.
Film is anti-language.
All good writing comes out of aloneness.
There is this aura that the three-act play is the important one: it's the one that you do to win the Pulitzer. Some part of you falls for that, and then after a while, you don't fall for that.
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.
I try not to be in situations where I'm being grabbed at. For the most part, you can avoid them.
Men lie all the time.
I love Levon Helm - he's one of my favorite guys.
My dad was a kind of semiprofessional Dixieland-type drummer, and I learned the drums from him. When I was about twelve, we bought our first Ludwig drum set from a pawnshop - a marching-band bass drum, great big tom-toms, and big, deep snare drums.
I still find it hard to believe that the whole era of jazz is over.
The wonderful thing about writing for theatre is you can go anywhere you want with the language. There are no limits. With film, they frown on language - it's always 'Too many words.'
To sit on a ranch horse that's been broken in, it's like getting in a Porsche.
People are starved for the truth, and when something comes along that even looks like the truth, people will latch onto it because everything's so false.
When you listen intensely to anything, you see how it can be improved.
I don't belong much anywhere.
When I first started in film, I was terrified of the camera.
Hats look exactly the same. There's no difference between The Writing Hat and The Acting Hat.
I've always found it embarrassing to receive awards.
I think most writers, in a sense, have this desire to disappear, to be absolutely anonymous, to be removed in some way: that comes out of the need to be a writer.
Why would you want to be be counseled in your grief? It's too private.
I had two experiences with very close friends of mine who experienced aphasia, the loss of language. It shocked me.
I don't attend costume parties.
It's really great to see an actor find himself, in his sojourn.
I have a cellphone, but I have no Google, I have no gaggle.
I used to work a lot on ranches where I grew up, and I had to rise at 5:30 in the morning.
I think Bolano had a generosity about him that was unique. He seemed to include so many people in the circle of his adventures, whereas I felt like I was pretty selfish.
When I first started, I didn't really know how to structure a play.
With acting, you can find a way to make it interesting for yourself, if nobody else - even on big-budget films. But you're very much on your own.
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.
I wrote 'Buried Child' in a trailer at an old ranch house we had in California.
A lot of American playwrights seem to have a career as a playwright. I don't consider it a career at all.
I feel like I'm a natural-born playwright, but the prose thing has always mystified me. How to keep it going? How do people do it, for years and years?
I basically live out of my truck - I mean from place to place. I feel more at home in my truck than just about anywhere, which is a sad thing to say, but it's true.
Directing feels great; I'm really happy to be doing this.
I don't believe in a lot of schmoozing and buttering up. Not that you don't become friends in work. But I think it's a misconception that you have to do a lot of hanging before you work.
To me, a strong sense of self isn't believing in a lot.
What I'm after is something different than supplying people with the idea that I'm writing an important play.
It's very easy to lose language - it can be shut off in a second.
I keep my horses out in the open, but when I was working the ranches, I had to clean the stalls. It was a horrible job.
I never thought about having a daughter, and then I had a daughter, and it was a remarkable thing. It was very different from having a son and your response to it. With a son, it's much more complex. And it's probably because of my stuff in the past. With a daughter, I was surprised at how simple it is.
Dialogue is like jazz. Dialogue is creative.
I've always felt a great affinity with music. I've felt myself to be more of a musician than anything else, though I'm not proficient in any one instrument. But I think I have a musical sense of things... and writing seems to me to be a musical experience - rhythmically and in many other ways.
What I like most about Bolano is his courage.
I see a lot of scripts, and very few of them leap off the page at you.
On every film, there are producers all over the place, and everyone's got to have an opinion. I think the screenplay is a beautiful form with great potential, but the environment around it is awful for a writer.
People are starved for a way of life - they're hunting for a way to be or to act toward the world.
I remember, as a kid, going into other people's houses. Everything was different. The smells in the kitchen were different; the clothing was different. That bothered me. There's something very mysterious about other families and the way they function.
I know, as an actor, you have to negotiate, but I can't handle the whole idea that art and commerce are synonymous. It drives me nuts.
