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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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Judgment
Must
Based
Enormously
Work
Succeed
Succeeds
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May
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More quotes by Edward Albee

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You want to dance with me, angel tits?
Edward Albee
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Progress is a set of assumptions.
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All plays are social comment to one extent or another.
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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There are only two things to write about: life and death.
Edward Albee
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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
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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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The thing that makes a creative person is to be creative and that is all there is to it.
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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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 notion that women are less aesthetically profound and innovative than men--just not very important, if you know what I mean--doubtless spreads back to our beginnings as upright animals: the males hunted and killed for the family while the females stayed home in the cave and tended the strange little creatures they were giving birth to.
Edward Albee
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Arthur Miller once payed me a great compliment saying that my plays were 'necessary.' I will go one step further and say that Arthur's plays are 'essential'
Edward Albee
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Martha: Oh, I like your anger. I think that's what I like about you most. Your anger.
Edward Albee
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When people don't like the way a play ends, they're likely to blame the play.
Edward Albee
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Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested.
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