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Art should never try to be popular.

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.
EDWARD ALBEE

Audience Criticism Encouragement End Theatre Yourself
Anything you put in a play – any speech – has got to do one of two things: either define character or push the action of the play along.
EDWARD ALBEE

Action Definition Oneself Play
People often ask me how long it takes me to write a play, and I tell them ‘all of my life.’
EDWARD ALBEE

Life Myself People Play Writing
Writing has got to be an act of discovery, I write to find out what I’m thinking about.
EDWARD ALBEE

Act Discover Myself Thinking Writing
That’s the happiest moment. When it’s all done. When we stop. When we can stop.
EDWARD ALBEE

Happiness Moments Stop
What people really want in the theater is fantasy involvement and not reality involvement.
EDWARD ALBEE

Fantasy Involvement People Reality Theatre
There is chaos behind the civility, of course.
EDWARD ALBEE

Chaos Civilization
I have learned that neither kindness or cruelty by themselves, or independent of each other, create any effect beyond themselves.
EDWARD ALBEE

Beyond Creation Cruelty Effect Independent Kindness Learning Myself
I am pleased and reassured by the fact that a lot of younger playwrights seem to pay me some attention and gain some nourishment from what I do.
EDWARD ALBEE

Attention Fact Myself Nourishment Pay Play Please Reassurance Young
If you’re willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly.
EDWARD ALBEE

Failure Inspirational Success Willing Yourself
Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested.
EDWARD ALBEE

Best Goodness Hope Intention
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.
EDWARD ALBEE

Bad Definition Goodness Reality Writing
When you get old, you can’t talk to people because people snap at you…. That’s why you become deaf, so you won’t be able to hear people talking to you that way.
EDWARD ALBEE

Old People Snap Talk Way Yourself
Sincerity doesn’t mean anything. A person can be sincere and be more destructive than a person who is insincere.
EDWARD ALBEE

Destruction Person Sincere
When people don’t like the way a play ends, they’re likely to blame the play.
EDWARD ALBEE

Blame End People Play Way
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.
EDWARD ALBEE

Author Character Extension Material People Personality Source Yourself

Art should never try to be popular.

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Art should never try to be popular.

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