American critics are like American universities. They both have dull and half-dead faculties.
EDWARD ALBEEOne must let the play happen to one; one must let the mind loose to respond as it will, to receive impressions, to sense rather than know, to gather rather than immediately understand.
More Edward Albee Quotes
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Art should never try to be popular.
EDWARD ALBEE -
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 -
I am not interested in living in a city where there isn’t a production by Samuel Beckett running.
EDWARD ALBEE -
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.
EDWARD ALBEE -
I think I was probably wondering, having looked at human beings for a long time, wondering if evolution ever took place. And I still have my doubts.
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.
EDWARD ALBEE -
Why we are here is an impenetrable question.
EDWARD ALBEE -
When a play enters my consciousness, is already a fairly well-developed fetus. I don’t put down a word until the play seems ready to be written.
EDWARD ALBEE -
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 -
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 -
Sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.
EDWARD ALBEE -
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 -
As a playwright, I imagine that in one fashion or another I’ve been influenced by every single play I’ve ever experienced.
EDWARD ALBEE -
You’re alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn’t lived it?
EDWARD ALBEE -
The act of writing is an act of optimism. You would not take the trouble to do it if you felt that it didn’t matter.
EDWARD ALBEE -
Maybe it’s a little more pertinent now since the whole concept of evolution is being questioned by the know-nothing Republican right. Yes, maybe the play’s a little more pertinent now.
EDWARD ALBEE -
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.
EDWARD ALBEE -
If you have no wounds, how can you know if you’re alive?
EDWARD ALBEE -
People often ask me how long it takes me to write a play, and I tell them ‘all of my life.’
EDWARD ALBEE -
The arts are the only things that separate us from the other animals. The arts are not decorative. They are essential to our comprehension of consciousness and ourselves.
EDWARD ALBEE -
One must let the play happen to one; one must let the mind loose to respond as it will, to receive impressions, to sense rather than know, to gather rather than immediately understand.
EDWARD ALBEE -
When a critic sets himself up as an arbiter of morality, a judge of the matter and not the manner of a work, he is no longer a critic; he is a censor.
EDWARD ALBEE -
Death is release, if you’ve lived all right.
EDWARD ALBEE -
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.
EDWARD ALBEE -
One has always got to be terribly careful, since the theater is made up of a whole bunch of prima donnas, not to let the distortions occur.
EDWARD ALBEE -
A writer is a controlled schizophrenic.
EDWARD ALBEE