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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
Art
Merit
May
Artistic
Wells
Intention
Well
Judgment
Must
Based
Enormously
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Succeed
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More quotes by 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
School curricula that ignore the arts produce highly educated Barbarians
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
By some curious mischance, a couple of my plays managed to hit an area where commercial success was feasible. But it's wrong to think I'm a commercial playwright who has somehow ceased his proper function. I have always been the same thing - which is not a commercial playwright. I'm not after the brass ring.
Edward Albee
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
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
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
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
I find that when my plays are going well, they seem to resemble pieces of music. But if I had to go into specifics about it, I wouldn't be able to. It's merely something that I feel.
Edward Albee
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
One must let the play happen to one one must let the mind loose to respond as it will, to receive impressions, to sense rather than know, to gather rather than immediately understand.
Edward Albee
You gotta have swine to show you where the truffles are.
Edward Albee
As a playwright, I imagine that in one fashion or another I've been influenced by every single play I've ever experienced.
Edward Albee
Art is nowhere near as dangerous as it should be.
Edward Albee
I suppose if you simplify things, it's going to make it easier to understand.
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
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
All plays are social comment to one extent or another.
Edward Albee
I imagine as an axiom you could say that the better the play, the less creativity the director need exert.
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
