Quote

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

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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
Play
Receive
Must
Impression
Mind
Fun
Happen
Impressions
Rather
Gather
Understand
Loose
Sense
Respond
Happens
Immediately

More quotes by 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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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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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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Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.
Edward Albee
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If you intellectualize and examine the creative process too carefully it can evaporate and vanish. It's not only terribly difficult to talk about, it's also dangerous.
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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I'm back in fashion again for a while now. But I imagine that three or four years from now I'll be out again. And in another fifteen years I'll be back. If you try to write to stay in fashion, if you try to write to be the critics' darling, you become an employee.
Edward Albee
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Art should never try to be popular.
Edward Albee
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I find that when my plays are going well, they seem to resemble pieces of music. But if I had to go into specifics about it, I wouldn't be able to. It's merely something that I feel.
Edward Albee
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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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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.
Edward Albee
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Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
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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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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To a certain extent I imagine a play is completely finished in my mind - in my case, at any rate - without my knowing it, before I sit down to write.
Edward Albee
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The only time I'll get good reviews is if I kill myself.
Edward Albee
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By some curious mischance, a couple of my plays managed to hit an area where commercial success was feasible. But it's wrong to think I'm a commercial playwright who has somehow ceased his proper function. I have always been the same thing - which is not a commercial playwright. I'm not after the brass ring.
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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That's the happiest moment. When it's all done. When we stop. When we can stop.
Edward Albee
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Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested.
Edward Albee