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You may dislike the intention enormously but your judgment of the artistic merit of the work must not be based on your view of what it's about. The work of art must be judged by how well it succeeds in its intention.

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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Succeeds
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More quotes by 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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It is a lazy public which promotes a slothful and irresponsible theater.
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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Every monster was a man first.
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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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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Some things that make sense to me don't make the same degree of sense to other people.
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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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
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The ultimate judgment of a work of art, whether it be a masterpiece or a lesser event, must be solely in terms of its artistic success and not on Freudian guesswork.
Edward Albee
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There are only two things to write about: life and death.
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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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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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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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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Art should never try to be popular.
Edward Albee
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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
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If the playwright is strong enough to hold on to reasonable objectivity in the face of either hostility or praise, he'll do his work the way he was going to anyway.
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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School curricula that ignore the arts produce highly educated Barbarians
Edward Albee