Quote

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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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
Action
Two
Character
Playwriting
Anything
Define
Play
Push
Things
Speech
Along
Either

More quotes by 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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I swear, if you existed I'd divorce you.
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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Some things that make sense to me don't make the same degree of sense to other people.
Edward Albee
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Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested.
Edward Albee
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A lot of people are confused by hello. A lot of people are confused by a lot of things they shouldn't be confused by.
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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I said I was impressed, Martha. I'm beside myself with jealousy. What do you want me to do, throw up?
Edward Albee
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My sense of reality and logic is different from most people's.
Edward Albee
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It always seems to me better to slough off the answer to a question that I consider to be a terrible invasion of privacy - the kind of privacy that a writer must keep for himself.
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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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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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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Well, when I was six years old I decided, not that I was going to be, but with my usual modesty, that I was a writer.
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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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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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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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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A writer is a controlled schizophrenic.
Edward Albee