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 ALBEEYou’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?
More Edward Albee Quotes
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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 -
In a democracy you cannot stop public access to that art that will most misinform the people. You cannot stop people from being misinformed. But what you can do is to educate the people to the point that they will throw the rascals out.
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 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 -
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 -
Progress is a set of assumptions.
EDWARD ALBEE -
If you’re willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly.
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 -
Very few people who met my adoptive mother in the last 20 years of her life could abide her, while many people who have seen my play find her fascinating. Heavens, what have I done?!
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 -
Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf means who’s afraid of the big bad wolf, who’s afraid of living life without false illusions.
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 -
I write to find out what I’m talking about.
EDWARD ALBEE -
The characters’ lives have gone on before the moment you chose to have the action of the play begin. And their lives are going to go on after you have lowered the final curtain on the play, unless you’ve killed them off.
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 think you remember everything, you just can’t bring it to mind all the time.
EDWARD ALBEE -
The most profound indication of social malignancy no sense of humor. None of the monoliths could take a joke.
EDWARD ALBEE -
Why we are here is an impenetrable question.
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 -
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 -
I don’t like symbolism that hits you over the head. A symbol should not be a cymbal.
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 -
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 -
It is a lazy public which promotes a slothful and irresponsible theater.
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