Quotessence
Home / Authors / Edward Albee
Edward Albee

Edward Albee Quotes

Playwright

Filter quotes by topic

AllPlayWritingIfsThinkingPeoplePlaywrightKnowsArtWantCriticsCharacterShouldYearsWellsSeemsRealityEndsTheaterTheatreTwo

Famous Edward Albee Quotes

“You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid -- but most people don't take the trouble.”

PeopleKnowsWantMeanLongFactsJobsPayAttentionOpinionTroubleStupidInformationHumilityApproachCriticismIntelligentCriticsEnthusiasmCombinationUninformed
Book:Conversations with Edward Albee
Create image

“The condition of the theater is always an accurate measure of the cultural health of a nation. A play always exists in the present tense (if it is a valuable one), and its music -- its special noise -- is always contemporary. The most valuable function of the theater as an art form is to tell us who we are, and the health of the theater is determined by how much of that we want to know.”

IfsKnowsWantArtPlayFormNationsSpecialConditionsFunctionTheaterValuableDeterminedTheatreContemporaryNoiseWho We AreAccurateTensePresent Tense
Book:Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays of Edward Albee
Create image

“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.”

IfsKnowsMenGivingMeanLittlesImportantHomeWomenAnimalStrangeBirthCreaturesFemaleProfoundMalesNotionSpreadCavesInnovativeGiving BirthHunted
Book:Lee Krasner: paintings from 1965 to 1970
Create image

“I stopped acting when I was about nineteen, twenty, when I got thrown out of college. I did act for about ten years. I don't know. I suspect I'm still a reasonably good actor, but I don't really know that I want to get on the stage again ... and having to say all those boring words by me over and over again ... I don't know if I want to do that. Also, I like a certain amount of freedom of movement, and if you're acting, you're stuck in one place for a long time. Having said that, I will probably be onstage next fall.”

IfsKnowsWantYearsLongSaidStillsCertainFallNextActorsActingStageMovementCollegeAmountTenLong TimeTwentiesBoringStuckThrownSuspectsGood ActorsNineteen
Book:Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays of Edward Albee
Create image

“About four years ago I made a list, for my own amusement, of the playwrights, the contemporary playwrights, by whom critics said I'd been influenced. I listed twenty-five. It included five playwrights whose work I didn't know, so I read these five playwrights and indeed now I suppose I can say I have been influenced by them. The problem is that the people who write these articles find the inevitable similarities of people writing in the same generation, in the same century, and on the same planet, and they put them together in a group.”

PeopleKnowsWritingYearsHas BeensMadeSaidI CanProblemTogetherMy OwnFiveFourGenerationsGroupsCenturyPlanetsYears AgoTwentiesCriticsListsContemporaryInevitableArticlesFour YearsAmusementPlaywrightSimilarityTwenty Five
Author:Edward Albee
Create image

“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
Create image