Sam Shepard Quotes

My family lived in Thousand Oaks. In 2002, when I was 17, I begged my parents to let me move out. I had money, a real job, and wanted to get my own place.

I was living with my stepfather for a while, and then I moved out and went and lived on my own in Hastings-by-the-Sea from about 16.

Those songs are about getting out; they're not about getting out of family. It wasn't about how family life was curtailing because I didn't know family life.

For all practical purposes I left home when I was 7.

I wanted above all else not to be like my mum.

I moved to California not to pursue acting but to get out of Albuquerque.

I moved out of home when I was 15.

When I was 17, I decided I was going to leave home.

I left home when I was 16 because I was looking for adventure.

When my mother died, I fell apart. My father wanted to control me. As a consequence, I ran away to America.

Childhood didn't have a big influence on me, really - in fact I spent most of it plotting how to escape.

My mother liked to command me to do things I found scary. I always wanted to stay home and read. My mother only ever wanted me to get away.

When I ask the young people from California why they want to go to New York, and the ones from the East why they're determined to go West, I hear what you'd expect: new challenges, different weather, boyfriends, girlfriends, to make a name... They laugh when I say, 'But your poor mother.'

I didn't really escape that gravity until I moved 300 miles south to go to college at 18, where authorship no longer seemed something liable to induce vengeful punishment.

I couldn't wait to get out, and at 14, I moved into a three-room Georgetown town house with Dad. I never went back. When they eventually sold the house, in 1984, Mom had a goodbye party for 'Merrywood.' I refused to go.

I ran away from small-town Canada to London; I ran away from my family because I didn't think I could be the person I was.

I think, from the very beginning, I always knew that I needed to get out of Malaysia and do my thing somewhere else.

I always say I broke my mom's heart when I left. I don't know if that's what any mom wants for her kid, just thinking about how hard it is trying to make it in this business.

It was hard for me to leave the nest, but my mom is super proud of me. She said, 'You became independent really quickly, and I'm so proud of you,' but she misses me all the same.

There is a moment, a chip in time, when leaving home is the lesser crime.

Farewell, Love, and all thy laws for ever.

This is what happens: somebody—girl usually—got a free spirit, doesn't get on too good with her parents. These kids, they're like tied-down helium balloons. They strain against the string and strain against it, and then something happens, and that string gets cut, and they just float away. And maybe you never see the balloon again . . . Or maybe three or four years from now, or three or four days from now, the prevailing winds take the balloon back home . . . But listen, kid, that string gets cut all the time.

If you want to be free, all you have to do is let go.

Better to dream than to be.