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Conversations with Edward Albee

Book by Edward Albee · 9 quotes · Play, Writing, Ifs

This book features in-depth conversations with Edward Albee, delving into his thoughts on theater, writing, and life. The discussions provide insights into Albee's creative process and the evolution of his work.

Book detail: Conversations with Edward Albee is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.

This book features in-depth conversations with Edward Albee, delving into his thoughts on theater, writing, and life. The discussions provide insights into Albee's creative process and the evolution of his work.

The quotes below use the same card format as the rest of the site, including topics, source notes, copy actions, image creation, and sharing controls.

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All Play Writing Ifs Playwright Thinking Seems Wells Years Character Critics People Art Knows Critical Enough Littles Reality Two Works Of Art Attention

Conversations with Edward Albee Quotes

“I was twenty-nine years old and I wasn't a very good poet and I wasn't a very good novelist, [so] I thought I would try writing a play, which seems to have worked out a little better.”

Writing Trying Years Littles Play Seems Poet Twenties Very Good Nine Novelists Nine Years

Book:Conversations with Edward Albee

Source: Conversations with 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.”

Facts Seems Pay Attention Gains Playwright Nourishment

Book:Conversations with Edward Albee

Source: Conversations with Edward Albee

“I don't set out to write a play a year. Sometimes I've written two plays a year. There was a period of a year and half when I only wrote half a play. If it depresses some critics that I seem prolific, well, that's their problem as much as mine.”

Ifs Writing Years Wells Two Sometimes Play Problem Seems Half Written Mines Periods Critics Depressing

Book:Conversations with Edward Albee

Source: Conversations with Edward Albee

“If you examine the history of any playwright of the past twenty - five or thirty years - I'm not talking about the comedy boys, I'm talking about the more serious writers - it seems inevitable that almost every one has been encouraged until the critics feel that they have built them up beyond the point where they can control them; then it's time to knock them down again.”

Ifs Feels Years Has Beens Seems Past Talking Boys Five Comedy Serious Built Twenties Critics Inevitable Thirty Playwright Thirty Years Not Talking Twenty Five

Book:Conversations with Edward Albee

Source: Conversations with Edward Albee

“When I was fifteen I wrote seven hundred pages of an incredibly bad novel - it's a very funny book I still like a lot. Then, when I was nineteen I wrote a couple hundred pages of another novel, which wasn't very good either. I was still determined to be a writer. And since I was a writer, and here I was twenty-nine years old and I wasn't a very good poet and I wasn't a very good novelist, I thought I would try writing a play, which seems to have worked out a little better.”

Writing Trying Years Littles Stills Book Play Seems Novel Poet Couple Pages Hundred Twenties Seven Very Good Determined Nine Novelists Fifteen Nine Years Nineteen Funny Book

Book:Conversations with Edward Albee

Source: Conversations with 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.”

Ifs Feels Wells Play Seems Able Pieces Specifics

Book:Conversations with Edward Albee

Source: Conversations with Edward Albee

“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.”

Play Whole Seems School Form Social Numbers Dangerous Intellectual Criticism Theme Progressive Realistic Censorship Playwright

Book:Conversations with Edward Albee

Source: Conversations with Edward Albee

“It always seems to me better to slough off the answer to a question that I consider to be a terrible invasion of privacy - the kind of privacy that a writer must keep for himself.”

Kind Seems Answers Terrible Privacy Invasion Invasion Of Privacy Slough

Book:Conversations with Edward Albee

Source: Conversations with Edward Albee

“A play is a parenthesis that contains all the material you think has to be contained for the action of the play. Where do you end that? Where the characters seem to come to a pause... where they seem to want to stop - rather like, I would think, the construction of a piece of music.”

Thinking Want Ends Play Character Seems Action Pieces Materials Construction Pauses Parentheses

Book:Conversations with Edward Albee

Source: Conversations with Edward Albee

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