Quote

Writing should be useful. If it can’t instruct people a little bit more about the responsibilities of consciousness, there’s no point in doing it.

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
People
Useful
Consciousness
Bits
Responsibility
Point
Littles
Little
Instruct
Writing
Responsibilities

More quotes by Edward Albee

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Careers are funny things. They begin mysteriously and, just as mysteriously, they can end.
Edward Albee
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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
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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.
Edward Albee
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I swear, if you existed I'd divorce you.
Edward Albee
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When one controls form, one doesn't do it with a stopwatch or a graph. One does it by sensing, again intuitively.
Edward Albee
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When people don't like the way a play ends, they're likely to blame the play.
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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What I wanted to get at is the value difference between pornographic playing-cards when you're a kid, and pornographic playing-cards when you're older. It's that when you're a kid you use the cards as a substitute for a real experience, and when you're older you use real experience as a substitute for the fantasy.
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 are only two things to write about: life and death.
Edward Albee
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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
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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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You may dislike the intention enormously but your judgment of the artistic merit of the work must not be based on your view of what it's about. The work of art must be judged by how well it succeeds in its intention.
Edward Albee
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It is a lazy public which promotes a slothful and irresponsible theater.
Edward Albee
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Progress is a set of assumptions.
Edward Albee
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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
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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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Art should never try to be popular.
Edward Albee
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Musical beds is the faculty sport around here.
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