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

More quotes by Edward Albee

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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.
Edward Albee
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Writing has got to be an act of discovery....I write to find out what I'm thinking about.
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My sense of reality and logic is different from most people's.
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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Careers are funny things. They begin mysteriously and, just as mysteriously, they can end.
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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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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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
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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
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Influence is a matter of selection - both acceptance and rejection.
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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The government is far more interested in taking, in regulated taking, than in promoting spontaneous generosity.
Edward Albee
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Progress is a set of assumptions.
Edward Albee
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There are always going to be more actors than anybody can ever use.
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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I find relatively little relationship between the work of art and the immediate critical response it gets.
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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I write to find out what I'm talking about.
Edward Albee
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I suppose if you simplify things, it's going to make it easier to understand.
Edward Albee
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I don't think I've ever written about me. I'm not a character in any of my plays, except that boy, that silent boy that turns up in Three Tall Women.
Edward Albee