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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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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
Time
Escapists
Think
Escapist
Thinking
Disturbing
People
Commerce
Destroyed
Waste
Serious
Art

More quotes by 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.
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Influence is a matter of selection - both acceptance and rejection.
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What I mean by an educated taste is someone who has the same tastes that I have.
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The only time I'll get good reviews is if I kill myself.
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The most profound indication of social malignancy ... no sense of humor. None of the monoliths could take a joke.
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There are only two things to write about: life and death.
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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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First, I'll kill the dog with kindness, and if that doesn't work, I'll just kill him.
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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.
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Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
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I have learned that neither kindness or cruelty by themselves, or independent of each other, create any effect beyond themselves.
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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.
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I imagine as an axiom you could say that the better the play, the less creativity the director need exert.
Edward Albee
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You want to dance with me, angel tits?
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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People often ask me how long it takes me to write a play, and I tell them 'all of my life.'
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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The government is far more interested in taking, in regulated taking, than in promoting spontaneous generosity.
Edward Albee
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The notion that women are less aesthetically profound and innovative than men--just not very important, if you know what I mean--doubtless spreads back to our beginnings as upright animals: the males hunted and killed for the family while the females stayed home in the cave and tended the strange little creatures they were giving birth to.
Edward Albee
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Art is nowhere near as dangerous as it should be.
Edward Albee