I write to find out what I’m talking about.
EDWARD ALBEEThe function of art is to bring people into greater touch with reality, and yet our movie houses and family rooms are jammed with people after as much reality-removal as they can get.
More Edward Albee Quotes
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Writing has got to be an act of discovery, I write to find out what I’m thinking about.
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Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.
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I suppose, writing a play is finding out what the play is.
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Being different is interesting; there’s nothing implicitly inferior or superior about it. Great difference, of course, produces natural caution; and if the differences are too extreme well, then, reality tends to fade away.
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Well, when you write about people of a certain age we are in a postsexual situation. If I write about younger people then I write sexually, because their drive is sexual. It depends upon the circumstances.
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A playwright has a responsibility in his society not to aid it, or comfort it, but to comment and criticize it.
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As a playwright, I imagine that in one fashion or another I’ve been influenced by every single play I’ve ever experienced.
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I think you remember everything, you just can’t bring it to mind all the time.
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It always seems to me better to slough off the answer to a question that I consider to be a terrible invasion of privacy – the kind of privacy that a writer must keep for himself.
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When people don’t like the way a play ends, they’re likely to blame the play.
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Sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.
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The responsibility of the writer is to be a sort of demonic social critic — to present the world and people in it as he sees it and say, “Do you like it? If you don’t like it, change it.
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I have been both overpraised and under praised. I assume by the time I finish writing — and I plan to go on writing until I’m 90 or gaga it will all equal itself out.
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All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don’t want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist. I don’t think art should be escapist. That’s a waste of time.
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Every monster was a man first.
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Your source material is the people you know, not those you don’t know, but every character is an extension of the author’s own personality.
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The function of art is to bring people into greater touch with reality, and yet our movie houses and family rooms are jammed with people after as much reality-removal as they can get.
EDWARD ALBEE -
Audiences and, to a large extent, critics who want less from theater than it is possible for it to give. If everybody’s encouraged to want less, you’ll end up with less.
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Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf means who’s afraid of the big bad wolf, who’s afraid of living life without false illusions.
EDWARD ALBEE -
I created myself, and I’ll attack anybody I feel like.
EDWARD ALBEE -
I don’t feel that catharsis in a play necessarily takes place during the course of a play. Often it should take place afterward.
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Sincerity doesn’t mean anything. A person can be sincere and be more destructive than a person who is insincere.
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Influence is a matter of selection – both acceptance and rejection.
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What people really want in the theater is fantasy involvement and not reality involvement.
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I don’t like symbolism that hits you over the head. A symbol should not be a cymbal.
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If you have no wounds, how can you know if you’re alive?
EDWARD ALBEE