"The greatest American playwright of his generation...the most inventive in language and revolutionary in craft...the writer whose work most accurately maps the interior and exterior landscapes of his society." –
New York Magazine "Stunning in their originality, defiant and inscrutable." –
Esquire "With the exception of David Mamet, no American playwright of his generation matches Mr. Shepard in the creation of characters that are immediately so accessible and so mysterious." –
The New York Times
"One of our best and most challenging playwrights. . . . His plays are a form of exorcism: magical, sometimes surreal rituals that grapple with the demonic forces in the American landscape." –
Newsweek "One of the most original, prolific and gifted dramatists at work today." –
The New Yorker
"Sam Shepard fulfills the role of professional playwright as a good ballet dancer or acrobat fulfills his role in performance. . . . He always delivers, he executes feats of dexterity and technical difficulty that an untrained person could not, and makes them seem easy." –
The Village Voice
"The major talent of his generation. . . . An original, a major force. . . . [Shepard] is a poet of the theater, shaping a new language out of broken words: an emotional seismograph registering the tremors which shake the substratum of human life." –
The Times (London)