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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Some writers' view of things depends upon the success of the final result. I'd rather stand or fall on my own concepts. But there is a fine line to be drawn between pointing up something or distorting it.
Edward Albee
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Being different is ... interesting there's nothing implicitly inferior or superior about it. Great difference, of course, produces natural caution and if the differences are too extreme ... well, then, reality tends to fade away.
Edward Albee
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Art should never try to be popular.
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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Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested.
Edward Albee
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It is a lazy public which promotes a slothful and irresponsible theater.
Edward Albee
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I'm not responsible for the commercialization. The people who produce the plays are responsible for it.
Edward Albee
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You gotta have swine to show you where the truffles are.
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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Some things that make sense to me don't make the same degree of sense to other people.
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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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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I write to find out what I'm talking about.
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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A writer is a controlled schizophrenic.
Edward Albee
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I have learned that neither kindness or cruelty by themselves, or independent of each other, create any effect beyond themselves.
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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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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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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Writing has got to be an act of discovery....I write to find out what I'm thinking about.
Edward Albee