Edward Albee Quotes (21 Quotes)

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.

The difference between critics and audiences is that one is a group of humans and one is not.

Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.

You gotta have swine to show you where the truffles are.

I'm not suggesting that the play is without fault; all of my plays are imperfect, I'm rather happy to say-it leaves me something to do.

A play is fiction - and fiction is fact distilled into truth.

He's a splendid writer and a good political activist. I can't think of a better choice.

American critics are like American universities. They both have dull and half-dead faculties.

It's hard to explain, or even remember, it now. All four of them were down there underwater, but it's too complicated to go into. I thought it was better just to eliminate it. If it had been necessary, I wouldn't have been able to cut it so easily. It still exists. It's probably in The Theatre Collection of The New York Public Library, but it can't be performed.

I've never seen it staged or on film, but the story is so intense that I could feel the adrenaline running through my body while reading it. There's this chest-tightening anxiety of being thrown into the middle of this conflict between the different characters. I also love the idea that you can be drawn in by hateful characters. It takes a very good writer to create a character that you despise, yet find engaging. And there's the twist of the imaginary child. As it develops, you realize what is actually going on beneath it all. It's shocking and pretty horrifying.

Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.

If Attila the Hun were alive today, he'd be a drama critic.

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.

What people really want in the theater is fantasy involvement and not reality involvement.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

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.

The thing that makes a creative person is to be creative and that is all there is to it.

One must let the play happen to one; one must let the mind loose to respond as it will, to receive impressions, to sense rather than know, to gather rather than immediately understand.

I swear, if you existed I'd divorce you.

Sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly.

I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor.