I don’t like symbolism that hits you over the head. A symbol should not be a cymbal.
EDWARD ALBEEI created myself, and I’ll attack anybody I feel like.
More Edward Albee Quotes
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That’s the happiest moment. When it’s all done. When we stop. When we can stop.
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 -
School curriculum that ignore the arts produce highly educated Barbarians.
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 -
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 -
I suppose, writing a play is finding out what the play is.
EDWARD ALBEE -
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 -
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.
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 -
Influence is a matter of selection – both acceptance and rejection.
EDWARD ALBEE -
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 -
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 -
It is a lazy public which promotes a slothful and irresponsible theater.
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 -
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 -
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 -
The most profound indication of social malignancy no sense of humor. None of the monoliths could take a joke.
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 -
Art should never try to be popular.
EDWARD ALBEE -
I think you remember everything, you just can’t bring it to mind all the time.
EDWARD ALBEE -
Few sensible authors are happy discussing the creative process–it is, after all, black magic.
EDWARD ALBEE -
Writing has got to be an act of discovery. Finding out things about what one is writing about.
EDWARD ALBEE -
If you’re willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly.
EDWARD ALBEE -
I have learned that neither kindness or cruelty by themselves, or independent of each other, create any effect beyond themselves.
EDWARD ALBEE -
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.
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