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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

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
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

Experience Fashion Imagination Myself Play
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

Feeling Myself Necessary Place Play
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
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
I am sick of the disparity between things as they are and as they should be. I’m tired.I’m tired of the truth and I’m tired of lying about the truth.
EDWARD ALBEE

Lying Myself Sick Tired Truth
The only time I’ll get good reviews is if I kill myself.
EDWARD ALBEE

Goodness Kill Myself Review Time
Art has an obligation to offend.
EDWARD ALBEE

Art Obligation Offend One Liner
I created myself, and I’ll attack anybody I feel like.
EDWARD ALBEE

Attack Creation Feeling Myself
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
Martha: Oh, I like your anger. I think that’s what I like about you most. Your anger.
EDWARD ALBEE

Angry Myself Thinking Yourself
What people really want in the theater is fantasy involvement and not reality involvement.
EDWARD ALBEE

Fantasy Involvement People Reality Theatre
A lot interests me – but nothing surprises me particularly.
EDWARD ALBEE

Interest Myself Surprise
When people don’t like the way a play ends, they’re likely to blame the play.
EDWARD ALBEE

Blame End People Play Way
I write to find out what I’m talking about.
EDWARD ALBEE

Finding Myself Talk Writing
A lot of people are confused by “hello.” A lot of people are confused by a lot of things they shouldn’t be confused by.
EDWARD ALBEE

Confusion Education People
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

Careful Prevent Terrible Theatre
Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested.
EDWARD ALBEE

Best Goodness Hope Intention
The most profound indication of social malignancy no sense of humor. None of the monoliths could take a joke.
EDWARD ALBEE

Humor Joke Social
Death is release, if you’ve lived all right.
EDWARD ALBEE

Death Live Right Yourself
School curriculum that ignore the arts produce highly educated Barbarians.
EDWARD ALBEE

Education Ignorance Production School
Sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.
EDWARD ALBEE

Correct Distance Necessary Order Time Way
Writing has got to be an act of discovery. Finding out things about what one is writing about.
EDWARD ALBEE

Act Discovery Finding Oneself Writing
Progress is a set of assumptions.
EDWARD ALBEE

Assumption One Liner Progress
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.
EDWARD ALBEE

Bad Definition Goodness Reality Writing
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.
EDWARD ALBEE

Answer Better Himself Invasion Privacy Question Terrible Writing
It is a lazy public which promotes a slothful and irresponsible theater.
EDWARD ALBEE

Promote Public Responsibility Theatre

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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