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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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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
Feelings
Samuel
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Without
Playwright
Whatsoever
Admire
Almost
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Beckett
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Reservation
More quotes by Edward Albee
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
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
True, I don't begin with an idea for a play - a thesis, in other words, to construct the play around. But I know a good deal about the nature of the characters. I know a great deal about their environment. And I more or less know what is going to happen in the play.
Edward Albee
It is a lazy public which promotes a slothful and irresponsible theater.
Edward Albee
I think it is the responsibility of critics to rely less strenuously on, to use a Hollywood phrase, what they can live with, and more on an examination of the works of art from an aesthetic and clinical point of view.
Edward Albee
Careers are funny things. They begin mysteriously and, just as mysteriously, they can end.
Edward Albee
You want to dance with me, angel tits?
Edward Albee
When people don't like the way a play ends, they're likely to blame the play.
Edward Albee
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
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
The only time I'll get good reviews is if I kill myself.
Edward Albee
That's the happiest moment. When it's all done. When we stop. When we can stop.
Edward Albee
The government is far more interested in taking, in regulated taking, than in promoting spontaneous generosity.
Edward Albee
If you have no wounds, how can you know if you're alive?
Edward Albee
You gotta have swine to show you where the truffles are.
Edward Albee
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
I suppose if you simplify things, it's going to make it easier to understand.
Edward Albee
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
Influence is a matter of selection - both acceptance and rejection.
Edward Albee
Writing should be useful. If it can’t instruct people a little bit more about the responsibilities of consciousness, there’s no point in doing it.
Edward Albee
