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Art should never try to be popular.

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

Function Greatness Movie Ourselves People Touch
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

Alive End Life Live Realization Worst Yourself
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

Different Fade Greatness Interesting Natural Production Reality
Musical beds is the faculty sport around here.
EDWARD ALBEE

Bed Music Sports
The act of creation, as you very well know, is a lonely and private matter and has nothing to do with the public area… the performance of the work one creates.
EDWARD ALBEE

Act Creation Lonely Oneself Performance Privacy
That’s the happiest moment. When it’s all done. When we stop. When we can stop.
EDWARD ALBEE

Happiness Moments Stop
Art has an obligation to offend.
EDWARD ALBEE

Art Obligation Offend One Liner
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
I am not interested in living in a city where there isn’t a production by Samuel Beckett running.
EDWARD ALBEE

Interest Live Myself Production Run
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
Creativity is magic. Don’t examine it too closely.
EDWARD ALBEE

Close Creativity Examination Magic
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
School curriculum that ignore the arts produce highly educated Barbarians.
EDWARD ALBEE

Education Ignorance Production School
Death is release, if you’ve lived all right.
EDWARD ALBEE

Death Live Right Yourself
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
If you’re willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly.
EDWARD ALBEE

Failure Inspirational Success Willing Yourself
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.
EDWARD ALBEE

Art Commerce Destroy Disturbance Escape People Serious Wasted Time
Few sensible authors are happy discussing the creative process–it is, after all, black magic.
EDWARD ALBEE

Author Black Creativity Discussion Magic Process
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
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

Equality Myself Praise Time Writing
Martha: Truth or illusion, George; you don’t know the difference. George: No, but we must carry on as though we did. Martha: Amen.
EDWARD ALBEE

Carry Difference Illusion Truth Yourself
Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.
EDWARD ALBEE

Democracy Deserve Oneself Politics Time
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
Progress is a set of assumptions.
EDWARD ALBEE

Assumption One Liner Progress
There are always going to be more actors than anybody can ever use.
EDWARD ALBEE

Actor Population
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
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

Act Feeling Optimism Trouble Writing Yourself

Art should never try to be popular.

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Art should never try to be popular.

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