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The responsibility of the writer is to be a sort of demonic social critic -- to present the world and people in it as he sees it and say, Do you like it? If you don't like it, change 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
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More quotes by 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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Art should never try to be popular.
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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I usually think about a play anywhere from six months to a year and a half before I sit down to write it out.
Edward Albee
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Your source material is the people you know, not those you don't know, but every character is an extension of the author's own personality.
Edward Albee
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The most profound indication of social malignancy ... no sense of humor. None of the monoliths could take a joke.
Edward Albee
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Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.
Edward Albee
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The only time I'll get good reviews is if I kill myself.
Edward Albee
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The playwright, along with any writer, composer, painter in this society, has got to have a terribly private view of his own value, of his own work. He's got to listen to his own voice primarily. He's got to watch out for fads, for what might be called the critical aesthetics.
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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Im not suggesting that the play is without fault all of my plays are imperfect, Im rather happy to say-it leaves me something to do.
Edward Albee
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In the theater, which is a sort of jungle, one does have to be a little bit careful. One mustn't be so rigid or egotistical to think that every comma is sacrosanct. But at the same time there is the danger of losing control and finding that somebody else has opened a play and not you.
Edward Albee
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You want to dance with me, angel tits?
Edward Albee
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One has always got to be terribly careful, since the theater is made up of a whole bunch of prima donnas, not to let the distortions occur.
Edward Albee
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Good writers define reality bad ones merely restate it.
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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Some things that make sense to me don't make the same degree of sense to other people.
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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I think you remember everything ... you just can't bring it to mind all the time.
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