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

More quotes by 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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First, I'll kill the dog with kindness, and if that doesn't work, I'll just kill him.
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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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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I suppose if you simplify things, it's going to make it easier to understand.
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 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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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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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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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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Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested.
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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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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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
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The thing that makes a creative person is to be creative and that is all there is to it.
Edward Albee
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There are only two things to write about: life and death.
Edward Albee
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The act of creation, as you very well know, is a lonely and private matter and has nothing to do with the public area... the performance of the work one creates.
Edward Albee
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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?
Edward Albee
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You gotta have swine to show you where the truffles are.
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