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Edward Albee

Edward Albee Quotes

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Famous Edward Albee Quotes

“In the two or three or four months that it takes me to write a play, I find that the reality of the play is a great deal more alive for me than what passes for reality. I'm infinitely more involved in the reality of the characters and their situation than I am in everyday life. The involvement is terribly intense.”

WritingTwoPlayCharacterRealityThreeDealsSituationFourAliveMonthsInvolvedEverydayIntenseTake MeEveryday LifeInvolvement
Book:Conversations with Edward Albee
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“In the thirties a whole school of criticism bogged down intellectually in those agitprop, social-realistic days. A play had to be progressive. A number of plays by playwrights who were thought very highly of then - they were very bad playwrights - were highly praised because their themes were intellectually and politically proper. This intellectual morass is very dangerous, it seems to me. A form of censorship.”

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Book:Conversations with Edward Albee
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“Usually, the way I write is to sit down at a typewriter after that year or so of what passes for thinking, and I write a first draft quite rapidly. Read it over. Make a few pencil corrections, where I think I've got the rhythms wrong in the speeches, for example, and then retype the whole thing. And in the retyping I discover that maybe one or two more speeches will come in. One or two more things will happen, but not much.”

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Author:Edward Albee
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“I know playwrights who like to kid themselves into saying that their characters are so well formed that they just take over. They determine the structure of the play. By which is meant, I suspect, only that the unconscious mind has done its work so thoroughly that the play just has to be filtered through the conscious mind. But there's work to be done - and discovery to be made.”

KnowsMindWellsMadeDonePlayCharacterKidsConsciousDiscoveryStructureDetermineUnconsciousSuspectsPlaywrightUnconscious MindConscious MindWork To Be Done
Book:Conversations with Edward Albee
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“Curiously enough, the only two plays that I've done very much revision on were the two adaptations - even though the shape of them was pretty much determined by the original work. With my own plays, the only changes, aside from taking a speech out here, putting one in there (if I thought I dwelled on a point a little too long or didn't make it explicit enough), are very minor; but even though they're very minor - having to do with the inability of actors or the unwillingness of the director to go along with me - I've always regretted them.”

IfsLittlesLongTwoDoneEnoughPlayActorsMy OwnShapesDirectorsSpeechOriginalsDeterminedMinorsInabilityAdaptationExplicitRevision
Book:Conversations with Edward Albee
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“There are two things that a playwright can have. Success or failure. I imagine there are dangers in both. Certainly the danger of being faced with indifference or hostility is discouraging, and it may be that success - acceptance if it's too quick, too lightning-quick - can turn the heads of some people.”

PeopleIfsMayTwoTurnsImagineDangerAcceptanceIndifferenceTwo ThingsLightningHostilityPlaywrightDiscouragingSuccess Or Failure
Book:Conversations with Edward Albee
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“Unless you are terribly, terribly careful, you run the danger-- without even knowing it is happening to you-- of slipping into the fatal error of reflecting the public taste instead of creating it. Your responsibility is to the public consciousness, not to the public view of itself.”

RunningViewsConsciousnessResponsibilityKnowingDangerTasteCreatingHappeningsErrorsCarefulReflectingSlipping
Book:Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays of Edward Albee
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“George, who is out somewhere there in the dark, who is good to me - whom I revile, who can keep learning the games we play as quickly as I can change them. Who can make me happy and I do not wish to be happy. And yes, I do wish to be happy. George and Martha: Sad, sad, sad. Whom I will not forgive for having come to rest; for having seen me and having said: “Yes, this will do”. Who has made the hideous, the hurting, the insulting mistake of loving… me, and must be punished for it. George and Martha… Sad, sad, sad.”

MadeSaidI CanPlayGamesWishHurtDarkMistakeForgivingInsultingHideousMake Me HappyKeep LearningLoving Me
Author:Edward Albee
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