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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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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
Great
Idea
Characters
Going
True
Begin
Good
Nature
Deal
Happens
Deals
Around
Environment
Character
Happen
Thesis
Ideas
Less
Construct
Play
Words
Constructs

More quotes by Edward Albee

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All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don't want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist. I don't think art should be escapist. That's a waste of time.
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First, I'll kill the dog with kindness, and if that doesn't work, I'll just kill him.
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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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Some things that make sense to me don't make the same degree of sense to other people.
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Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.
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Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested.
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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.
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Being different is ... interesting there's nothing implicitly inferior or superior about it. Great difference, of course, produces natural caution and if the differences are too extreme ... well, then, reality tends to fade away.
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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.
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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.
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You gotta have swine to show you where the truffles are.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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You want to dance with me, angel tits?
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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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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.
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If you have no wounds, how can you know if you're alive?
Edward Albee