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Few sensible authors are happy discussing the creative process–it is, after all, black magic.

Edward Albee

I find relatively little relationship between the work of art and the immediate critical response it gets.
EDWARD ALBEE

Art Criticism Finding Myself Relative Response Work
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
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
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
Death is release, if you’ve lived all right.
EDWARD ALBEE

Death Live Right Yourself
A play is fiction and fiction is fact distilled into truth.
EDWARD ALBEE

Fact Fiction Play Truth
What I mean by an educated taste is someone who has the same tastes that I have.
EDWARD ALBEE

Education Myself Preference Taste
Every monster was a man first.
EDWARD ALBEE

Man Monster One Liner
Why we are here is an impenetrable question.
EDWARD ALBEE

Philosophy Question
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
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
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

Conscious Development Myself Play Writing
People often ask me how long it takes me to write a play, and I tell them ‘all of my life.’
EDWARD ALBEE

Life Myself People Play Writing
Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested.
EDWARD ALBEE

Best Goodness Hope Intention
There is chaos behind the civility, of course.
EDWARD ALBEE

Chaos Civilization
Progress is a set of assumptions.
EDWARD ALBEE

Assumption One Liner Progress
American critics are like American universities. They both have dull and half-dead faculties.
EDWARD ALBEE

Criticism Death Facility
I don’t like symbolism that hits you over the head. A symbol should not be a cymbal.
EDWARD ALBEE

Head Hit Symbol Yourself
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

Adoption Fascinate Mom Myself People Play
Creativity is magic. Don’t examine it too closely.
EDWARD ALBEE

Close Creativity Examination Magic
I think you remember everything, you just can’t bring it to mind all the time.
EDWARD ALBEE

Mindset Myself Remember Thinking Time Yourself
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
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
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.
EDWARD ALBEE

Bad Definition Goodness Reality Writing
A writer is a controlled schizophrenic.
EDWARD ALBEE

Control Perspective 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

Few sensible authors are happy discussing the creative process–it is, after all, black magic.

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Few sensible authors are happy discussing the creative process–it is, after all, black magic.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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