Quote

Read the great stuff, but read the stuff that isn't so great, too. Great stuff is very discouraging. If you read only Beckett and Chekhov, you'll go away and only deliver telegrams for Western Union.

Edward Albee

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Edward Albee
Age: 88 †
Born: 1928
Born: March 12
Died: 2016
Died: September 16
Author
Playwright
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Theatrical Director
University Teacher
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Edward Franklin Albee III
Edward Albee
Union
Unions
Western
Read
Telegrams
Stuff
Beckett
Away
Chekhov
Great
Discouraging
Deliver

More quotes by Edward Albee

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Every writer's got to pay some attention, I suppose, to what his critics say because theirs is a reflection of what the audience feels about his work.
Edward Albee
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The one living playwright I admire without any reservation whatsoever is Samuel Beckett. I have funny feelings about almost all the others.
Edward Albee
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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
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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.
Edward Albee
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I don't think I've ever written about me. I'm not a character in any of my plays, except that boy, that silent boy that turns up in Three Tall Women.
Edward Albee
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My sense of reality and logic is different from most people's.
Edward Albee
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I find relatively little relationship between the work of art and the immediate critical response it gets.
Edward Albee
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A lot interests me - but nothing surprises me particularly.
Edward Albee
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There are lots of young vital playwrights who are experimenting, and these are the plays that people who are interested in the theatre should see. They should go off Broadway. They should go to the cafe theatres and see the experiments that are being made.
Edward Albee
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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
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Some things that make sense to me don't make the same degree of sense to other people.
Edward Albee
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Arthur Miller once payed me a great compliment saying that my plays were 'necessary.' I will go one step further and say that Arthur's plays are 'essential'
Edward Albee
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The final evaluation of a play has nothing to do with immediate audience or critical response.
Edward Albee
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There may be lots of questions that anybody - an actor or a director or anybody - can ask about a character in a play of mine that are not answered in the play, but if it's a question that I don't think is relevant, I don't bother about it. There's no reason to ask it.
Edward Albee
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Writing has got to be an act of discovery....I write to find out what I'm thinking about.
Edward Albee
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When you're dealing with a symbol in a realistic play, it is also a realistic fact. You must expect the audience's mind to work on both levels, symbolically and realistically. But we're trained so much in pure, realistic theater that it's difficult for us to handle things on two levels at the same time.
Edward Albee
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The government is far more interested in taking, in regulated taking, than in promoting spontaneous generosity.
Edward Albee
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You gotta have swine to show you where the truffles are.
Edward Albee
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Art is nowhere near as dangerous as it should be.
Edward Albee
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I think we should all live on the precipe of life, as fully and as dangerously as possible. Everyone should make the assumption that they're going through life only once. Tomorrow we die. Why not take chances, extend yourself? How awful it is when a person comes to the end of life full of regret.
Edward Albee