3 December 2020 Wallace Shawn 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.
3 December 2020 Wallace Shawn 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.
3 December 2020 Wallace Shawn 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.
3 December 2020 Wallace Shawn I was making my living from a joke about my appearance that I didn’t understand, and in a way still don’t, because when I look in a mirror it doesn’t seem funny to me.
3 December 2020 Wallace Shawn 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?
3 December 2020 Wallace Shawn You can go to a play that is enjoyable because it’s funny, and then on the next night you can go to a play that’s enjoyable because it’s ‘disturbing.’
3 December 2020 Wallace Shawn 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.
3 December 2020 Wallace Shawn In my early 20s, I studied history and politics, and I really thought that perhaps I would devote my life to that.
3 December 2020 Wallace Shawn 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.
3 December 2020 Wallace Shawn 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!
3 December 2020 Wallace Shawn 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.
