Edward Albee Quotes
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.
Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.
Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.
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.
Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf means who's afraid of the big bad wolf ... who's afraid of living life without false illusions.
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?
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.
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.
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.
A playwright has a responsibility in his society not to aid it, or comfort it, but to comment and criticize it.
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.
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.
People often ask me how long it takes me to write a play, and I tell them 'all of my life.'
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.
As a playwright, I imagine that in one fashion or another I've been influenced by every single play I've ever experienced.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sincerity doesn't mean anything. A person can be sincere and be more destructive than a person who is insincere.
What people really want in the theater is fantasy involvement and not reality involvement.
Writing has got to be an act of discovery. Finding out things about what one is writing about.
Martha: Oh, I like your anger. I think that's what I like about you most. Your anger.
I am not interested in living in a city where there isn't a production by Samuel Beckett running.
Martha: Truth or illusion, George; you don't know the difference. George: No, but we must carry on as though we did. Martha: Amen.
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.
The ultimate judgment of a work of art, whether it be a masterpiece or a lesser event, must be solely in terms of its artistic success and not on Freudian guesswork.
The most profound indication of social malignancy ... no sense of humor. None of the monoliths could take a joke.
American critics are like American universities. They both have dull and half-dead faculties.
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.
