Wallace Shawn Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Wallace Shawn. Here they are! All 27 of them:

...the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon.
Noam Chomsky
I don't know about you, but I only have one life, and I don't want to spend it in a sewer of injustice.
Wallace Shawn
ANDRÉ: Okay. Yes. We’re bored now. We’re all bored. But has it ever occurred to you, Wally, that the process which creates this boredom that we see in the world now may very well be a self-perpetuating unconscious form of brainwashing created by a world totalitarian government based on money? And that all of this is much more dangerous, really, than one thinks? And that it’s not just a question of individual survival, Wally, but that somebody who’s bored is asleep? And somebody who’s asleep will not say no?
Wallace Shawn (My Dinner With André)
We're just going around all day like unconscious machines, and meanwhile there's all this rage and worry and uneasiness just building up and building up inside us
Wallace Shawn (My Dinner With André)
ANDRÉ: . . . And when I was at Findhorn I met this extraordinary English tree expert who had devoted himself to saving trees, and he’d just got back from Washington lobbying to save the Redwoods. And he was eighty-four years old, and he always travels with a backpack because he never knows where he’s going to be tomorrow. And when I met him at Findhorn he said to me, “Where are you from?” And I said, “New York.” And he said, “Ah, New York, yes, that’s a very interesting place. Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave, but never do?” And I said, “Oh, yes.” And he said, “Why do you think they don’t leave?” And I gave him different banal theories. And he said, “Oh, I don’t think it’s that way at all.” He said, “I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing that they’ve built—they’ve built their own prison—and so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners. And as a result they no longer have—having been lobotomized—the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made or even to see it as a prison.” And then he went into his pocket, and he took out a seed for a tree, and he said, “This is a pine tree.” And he put it in my hand. And he said, “Escape before it’s too late.
Wallace Shawn (My Dinner With André)
Many of my all-time favorite movies are almost entirely verbal. The entire plot of My Dinner with Andre is “Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory eat dinner.” The entire plot of Before Sunrise is “Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy walk around Vienna.” But the dialogue takes us everywhere, and as Roger Ebert notes, of My Dinner with Andre, these films may be paradoxically among the most visually stimulating in the history of the cinema:
Brian Christian (The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive)
Revenge and punishment both imply, “Even if I’d been you, and I’d had your life, I would never have done what you did.” And that in turn implies, “I wouldn’t have done it, because I’m better than you.” But the person who says, “I’m better than you” is taking a serious step in a very dangerous direction. And the person who says, “Even if I’d had your life, I would never have done what you did” is very probably wrong.
Wallace Shawn (Night Thoughts)
Actually, we shot it over two days and the ghost of Danny DeVito was devastatingly present the whole time.
Wallace Shawn (As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride)
She knows very well that the way to find happiness in this world is not to hate your life but to somehow learn how to accept your life. Take pride in your work, whatever it is. Derive whatever pleasure you can from whatever surrounds you—the sky, the people you like, the light falling on the brick wall.
Wallace Shawn (Night Thoughts)
I went for a drink at the Algonquin with Wallace Shawn, the editor of The New Yorker’s son, who I have been told wants to write. I loved his creaky voice and twinkly, creased-up eyes. He’s like a small, anxious hippo, so full of quotable insights. “America has no memory,” he explained. “Nothing LEADS to anything in New York.
Tina Brown (The Vanity Fair Diaries: Power, Wealth, Celebrity, and Dreams: My Years at the Magazine That Defined a Decade)
Religion can mean solace and serenity, a kind of security, a private small garden of kindness in a desert of cruelty that seems to stretch out as far as they can see.
Wallace Shawn (Night Thoughts)
We can't be direct, so we end up saying the weirdest things.
Wallace Shawn (My Dinner With André)
WALLY: . . . That may be why I never understand what’s going on at a party, and I’m always completely confused. I mean, we’ll come home, and Debby will describe some incredible incident, and I won’t have even noticed it. Everything passes in a kind of trance. You know, Debby once said after one of these New York evenings that she thought she’d traveled a greater distance just by journeying from her origins in the suburbs of Chicago to that New York evening than her grandmother had traveled in making her way from the steppes of Russia to the suburbs of Chicago.
Wallace Shawn (My Dinner With André)
As far as my connection to other people went, I was usually affectionate. I was usually fond of the people I met: the privileged. And I’m still fond of them. I know them well. It’s easy for me to see them not as others might see them, as a group of people who fundamentally are all the same, because as holders of privilege the all play fundamentally the same social role, but as they see themselves: as remarkably distinct individuals with different opinions, thoughts, and characteristics. I know very well that they suffer, I know that they’re lonely, they’re lost, they’re desperate, whatever.
Wallace Shawn (Essays)
. . . Yes, I’m an aesthete. I like beauty. Yes – poor countries are beautiful. Poor people are beautiful. It’s a wonderful feeling to have money in a country where most people are poor, to ride in a taxi through horrible slums. Yes – a beggar can be beautiful. A beggar can have beautiful lips, beautiful eyes. You’re far from home. To you, her simple shawl seems elegant, direct, the right way to dress. You see her approaching from a great distance. She’s old, thin, and yes, she looks sick, very sick, near death. But her face is beautiful – seductive, luminous. You like her – you’re drawn to her. Yes, you think – there’s money in your purse – you’ll give her some of it. And a voice says – Why not all of it? Why not give her all you have? Be careful, that’s a question that could poison your life. Your love of beauty could actually kill you. If you hear that question, it means you’re sick. You’re mentally sick. You’ve had a breakdown.
Wallace Shawn (The Fever)
Revenge and punishment both imply, "Even if I'd been you, and I'd had your life, I would never have done what you did." And that in turn implies, "I wouldn't have done it, because I'm better than you." But the person who says, "I'm better than you," is taking a serious step in a very dangerous direction. And the person who says, "Even if I'd had your life, I would never have done what you did," is very probably wrong.
Wallace Shawn (Night Thoughts)
He wasn't just lucky. He was someone who had the capacity to see his own luck and enjoy it. An awful lot of people who are lucky don't recognize it and make everybody else sick by complaining about their lot when everyone else knows they've had such great luck.
Wallace Shawn
So when people said that the music or the book or the film was "good" or "bad," I usually felt that I just didn't know what they were talking about.
Wallace Shawn (Essays)
I've lived in this city all my life. I grew up on the Upper East Side. And when I was ten years old, I was rich, I was an aristocrat. Riding around in taxis, surrounded by comfort, and all I thought about was art and music. Now, I'm 36, and all I think about is money.
Wallace Shawn (My Dinner With André)
seems I have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. It’s a lifelong appointment and there are no dues, just glory and hobnobbery. I look at the list of current members and feel woozy. In the department of literature, there’s Ann Beattie, Michael Cunningham, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, Amy Hempel, Jamaica Kincaid, David Mamet, Lorrie Moore, Joyce Carol Oates, Sharon Olds, Ann Patchett, Jayne Anne Phillips, Francine Prose, Marilynne Robinson, George Saunders, Wallace Shawn, Anne Tyler, Edmund White, Joy Williams, and Tobias Wolff. Really? I think. These people are gods to me. It’s like I’ve been allowed onto Mount Olympus. Then there are the departments of art (Bruce Nauman, Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer, Susan Rothenberg), music, and architecture. Honorary members—people whose work falls outside these categories—include Bob Dylan, Meryl Streep, Frederick Wiseman, and Martin Scorsese.
David Sedaris (A Carnival of Snackery: Diaries (2003-2020))
But I've actually lived long enough now to have figured out what the word "morality" really refers to. I do know what it means, although it's pretty outrageous. It refers to a very simple thought: we shouldn't accept this principle that strong inevitably triumphs over weak. Luck has distributed strength in an arbitrary way: this lion is stronger, this elk is stronger, this group of people lives closer to the river, this group of people lives farther away. Luck has given the person with the penis, the people with the guns, a bit more strength, and so they've trampled over everyone else. Morality says we shouldn't accept that. For the bigger kid to take the smaller kid's candy bar is not right; it's wrong. And if the bigger kid gives that candy bar to me, the process by which I received it was wrong, and it's wrong for me to have it, and it's wrong for me to eat it.
Wallace Shawn (Night Thoughts)
It was surprising enough when strangely dressed religious leaders took over the government of such a large country as Iran. But now, these bin Ladenists? The tactics they've used are bloodthirsty, sadistic. They shamelessly show their pleasure when their enemies are killed. They touch their victims, they look at their faces. They film the killings! These are all things that we would never do--well, except on very rare occasions, like the time we killed bin Laden himself.
Wallace Shawn (Night Thoughts)
It seems undeniable that once it beings, violence leads us into some sort of madness, some terrifying maze inside the mind in which we become lost, and we don't know what's happening or what we ourselves are doing.
Wallace Shawn (Night Thoughts)
You can sum me up in about ten words: a former student of English literature who—who—who went downhill from there! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!
Wallace Shawn (The Designated Mourner)
My dick lay limply inside my trousers, like a little lunch packed by Mother.
Wallace Shawn (The Designated Mourner)
ANDRÉ: . . . And when I was at Findhorn I met this extraordinary English tree expert who had devoted himself to saving trees, and he’d just got back from Washington lobbying to save the Redwoods. And he was eighty-four years old, and he always travels with a backpack because he never knows where he’s going to be tomorrow. And when I met him at Findhorn he said to me, “Where are you from?” And I said, “New York.” And he said, “Ah, New York, yes, that’s a very interesting place. Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave, but never do?” And I said, “Oh, yes.” And he said, “Why do you think they don’t leave?” And I gave him different banal theories. And he said, “Oh, I don’t think it’s that way at all.” He said, “I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing that they’ve built—they’ve built their own prison—and so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners. And as a result they no longer have—having been lobotomized—the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made or even to see it as a prison.” And then he went into his pocket, and he took out a seed for a tree, and he said, “This is a pine tree.” And he put it in my hand. And he said, “Escape before it’s too late.
Shawn Wallace
There was no feeling at all between Joan and me, so I talked about myself. I talked without stopping for two hours about myself, pulling little sounds of understanding out of poor Joan's mouth the way in prison we pulled plates of food from slots in the doors.
Wallace Shawn (The Designated Mourner)