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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

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
Creativity is magic. Don’t examine it too closely.
EDWARD ALBEE

Close Creativity Examination Magic
Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested.
EDWARD ALBEE

Best Goodness Hope Intention
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
What I mean by an educated taste is someone who has the same tastes that I have.
EDWARD ALBEE

Education Myself Preference Taste
If you’re willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly.
EDWARD ALBEE

Failure Inspirational Success Willing 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
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 think you remember everything, you just can’t bring it to mind all the time.
EDWARD ALBEE

Mindset Myself Remember Thinking Time Yourself
A lot interests me – but nothing surprises me particularly.
EDWARD ALBEE

Interest Myself Surprise
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

Age Character Circumstance Myself Play Sexual Situation Young
I write to find out what I’m talking about.
EDWARD ALBEE

Finding Myself Talk Writing
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
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
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
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
What people really want in the theater is fantasy involvement and not reality involvement.
EDWARD ALBEE

Fantasy Involvement People Reality Theatre
Progress is a set of assumptions.
EDWARD ALBEE

Assumption One Liner Progress
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
There are only two things to write about: life and death.
EDWARD ALBEE

Death Life Poet Writing
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.
EDWARD ALBEE

Bad Definition Goodness Reality Writing
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
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
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
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

Lose Mindset Oneself Play Respond Understand
The responsibility of the writer is to be a sort of demonic social critic — to present the world and people in it as he sees it and say, “Do you like it? If you don’t like it, change it.
EDWARD ALBEE

Change Criticism Responsibility Social Yourself

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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