Edward Albee Quotes & Sayings

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

The government is far more interested in taking, in regulated taking, than in promoting spontaneous generosity. — Edward Albee

To all of you who have made my being alive so wonderful, so exciting and so full, my thanks and all my love. — Edward Albee

In a democracy you cannot stop public access to that art that will most misinform the people. You cannot stop people from being misinformed. But what you can do is to educate the people to the point that they will throw the rascals out. — Edward Albee

Maybe it's a little more pertinent now since the whole concept of evolution is being questioned by the know-nothing Republican right. Yes, maybe the play's a little more pertinent now. — Edward Albee

Good writers define reality
Bad ones merely restate it. — Edward Albee

All of my plays are about people missing the boat, closing down too young, coming to the end of their lives with regret at things not done, as opposed to things done. II find most people spend too much time living as if they're never going to die. — Edward Albee

Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage. — Edward Albee

When you get old, you can't talk to people because people snap at you ... That's why you become deaf, so you won't be able to hear people talking to you that way. — Edward Albee

You're in a straight line, buddy-boy, and it doesn't lead anywhere ... except maybe the grave. — Edward Albee

A playwright has a responsibility in his society not to aid it, or comfort it, but to comment and criticize it. — Edward Albee

I swear, if you existed I'd divorce you. — Edward Albee

I'm not responsible for the commercialization. The people who produce the plays are responsible for it. — Edward Albee

I created myself, and I'll attack anybody I feel like. — Edward Albee

Careers are funny things. They begin mysteriously and, just as mysteriously, they can end. — Edward Albee

There are only two things to write about: life and death. — Edward Albee

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

When I'm writing a play I hear it like music. I use the same indications that a composer does for duration. There's a difference, I tell my students, between a semi-colon and a period. A difference in duration. And we have all these wonderful things, we use commas and underlining and all the wonderful punctuation things we can use in the same way a composer uses them in music. And we can indicate, as specifically as a composer, the way we want our piece to sound. — Edward Albee

I think we should all live on the precipe of life, as fully and as dangerously as possible. Everyone should make the assumption that they're going through life only once. Tomorrow we die. Why not take chances, extend yourself? How awful it is when a person comes to the end of life full of regret. — Edward Albee

Lady, you can't fuck a metaphor. — Edward Albee

Martha: Oh, I like your anger. I think that's what I like about you most. Your anger. — Edward Albee

Why we are here is an impenetrable question. — Edward Albee

The act of writing is an act of optimism. You would not take the trouble to do it if you felt that it didn't matter. — Edward Albee

The function of art is to bring people into greater touch with reality, and yet our movie houses and family rooms are jammed with people after as much reality-removal as they can get. — Edward Albee

The greatest problem with Irish Wolfhounds, though, is that they don't live very long: their great hearts give out. A good deal of this is genetic, of course, but I think it is in part that they worry so for us, care so much. — Edward Albee

I find relatively little relationship between the work of art and the immediate critical response it gets. — Edward Albee

I have learned that neither kindness or cruelty by themselves, or independent of each other, create any effect beyond themselves. — Edward Albee

Alright ... what do you want me to say? Do you want me to say it's funny, so you can contradict me and say it's sad? Or do you want me to say it's sad so you can turn around and say no, it's funny. You can play that damn little game any way you want to, you know! — Edward Albee

Death is release, if you've lived all right. — Edward Albee

Being different is ... interesting; there's nothing implicitly inferior or superior about it. Great difference, of course, produces natural caution; and if the differences are too extreme ... well, then, reality tends to fade away. — Edward Albee

If you're willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly. — Edward Albee

Any definition which limits us is deplorable. — Edward Albee

To write a play one must be born a playwright. Otherwise, you're starting at a huge disadvantage. — Edward Albee

I write to find out what I'm talking about. — Edward Albee

Musical beds is the faculty sport around here. — Edward Albee

I am not interested in living in a city where there isn't a production by Samuel Beckett running. — Edward Albee

Sincerity doesn't mean anything. A person can be sincere and be more destructive than a person who is insincere. — Edward Albee

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. — Edward Albee

The arts are the only things that separate us from the other animals. The arts are not decorative ... They are essential to our comprehension of consciousness and ourselves. — Edward Albee

The Theatre of the Absurd, in the sense that it is truly the contemporary theatre, facing as it does man's condition as it is, is the Realistic theatre of our time; and that the supposed Realistic theatre - the term used here to mean most of what is done on Broadway - in the sense that it panders to the public need for self-congratulation and reassurance and presents a false picture of ourselves to ourselves is ... really and truly The Theatre of the Absurd. — Edward Albee

Martha: Truth or illusion, George; you don't know the difference.
George: No, but we must carry on as though we did.
Martha: Amen. — Edward Albee

All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don't want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist. I don't think art should be escapist. That's a waste of time. — Edward Albee

It is a lazy public which promotes a slothful and irresponsible theater. — Edward Albee

I am a doctor. A.B ... M.A ... PH.D ... ABMAPHID! Abmaphid has been variously described as a wasting disease of the frontal lobes, and as a wonder drug. It is actually both.I'm really very mistrustful. — Edward Albee

That's what happens in plays, yes? The shit hits the fan.
Edward Albee — Edward Albee

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

It is not enough to hold the line against the dark. It is your responsibility to lead into the light. People don't like the light
it reveals too much. But hand in hand with the creative artist, you can lead people into the wisdom that is known to all other animals: simply, that it is the dark we have to fear. — Edward Albee

Well, when you write about people of a certain age ... we are in a postsexual situation. If I write about younger people then I write sexually, because their drive is sexual. It depends upon the circumstances. — Edward Albee

The avant-garde theater is fun; it is free-wheeling, bold, iconoclastic, and often wildly, wildly funny. If you will approach it with childlike innocence
putting your standard responses aside, for they do not apply
if you will approach it on its own terms, I think you will be in for a liberating surprise. I think you may no longer be content with plays that you can't remember halfway down the block. — Edward Albee

There are always going to be more actors than anybody can ever use. — Edward Albee

By some curious mischance, a couple of my plays managed to hit an area where commercial success was feasible. But it's wrong to think I'm a commercial playwright who has somehow ceased his proper function. I have always been the same thing
which is not a commercial playwright. I'm not after the brass ring. — Edward Albee

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. — Edward Albee

I dance like the wind. — Edward Albee

Every monster was a man first. — Edward Albee

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. — Edward Albee

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — Edward Albee

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

There may be lots of questions that anybody - an actor or a director or anybody - can ask about a character in a play of mine that are not answered in the play, but if it's a question that I don't think is relevant, I don't bother about it. There's no reason to ask it. — Edward Albee

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. — Edward Albee

We must have that put in Latin - We do what we can - on — Edward Albee

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

There are lots of young vital playwrights who are experimenting, and these are the plays that people who are interested in the theatre should see. They should go off Broadway. They should go to the cafe theatres and see the experiments that are being made. — Edward Albee

That's the happiest moment. When it's all done. When we stop. When we can stop. — Edward Albee

Anything you put in a play
any speech
has got to do one of two things: either define character or push the action of the play along. — Edward Albee

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. — Edward Albee

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. — Edward Albee

First, I'll kill the dog with kindness, and if that doesn't work, I'll just kill him. — 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. — Edward Albee

A writer is a controlled schizophrenic. — Edward Albee

We proceed in this society of ours on the possibly valid but untrue assumption that the public knows what it wants-- indeed, that it is given sufficient information about what is available to make such a judgment. And then we jump, irresponsibly and absurdly, to the notion that there is a valid relationship between what the public wants and what it should want. — Edward Albee

I do not invent characters. There they are. That's who they are. That's their nature. They talk and they behave the way they want to behave. I don't have a character behaving one way, then a point comes in the play where the person has to either stay or leave. If I had it plotted that the person leaves, then the person leaves. If that's what the person wants to do. I let the person do what the person wants or has to do at the time of the event. — Edward Albee

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

There is chaos behind the civility, of course. — Edward Albee

What I mean by an educated taste is someone who has the same tastes that I have. — Edward Albee

Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested. — Edward Albee

I'm infinitely more involved in the reality of the characters and their situation than I am in everyday life. — Edward Albee

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

Art is nowhere near as dangerous as it should be. — Edward Albee

Arthur Miller once payed me a great compliment saying that my plays were 'necessary.' I will go one step further and say that Arthur's plays are 'essential' — Edward Albee

The only time I'll get good reviews is if I kill myself. — Edward Albee

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. — Edward Albee

Art should never try to be popular. — Edward Albee

I think I was probably wondering, having looked at human beings for a long time, wondering if evolution ever took place. And I still have my doubts. — Edward Albee

In my mind, Martha, you are buried in cement right up to your neck. No ... right up to your nose ... that's much quieter. — Edward Albee

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

Very few people who met my adoptive mother in the last 20 years of her life could abide her, while many people who have seen my play find her fascinating. Heavens, what have I done?! — Edward Albee

HONEY: (Apologetically, holding up her brandy bottle) I peel labels.
GEORGE: We all peel labels, sweetie; and when you get through the skin, all three layers, through the muscle, slosh aside the organs (An aside to NICK) them which is still sloshable
(Back to HONEY) and get down to bone ... you know what you do then?
HONEY: (Terribly interested) No!
GEORGE: When you get down to bone, you haven't got all the way, yet. There's something inside the bone ... the marrow ... and that's what you gotta get at. (A strange smile at MARTHA) — Edward Albee

Stevie: (Not listening) That you can do these two things ... and not understand how it ... SHATTERS THE GLASS!!?? How it cannot be dealt with-how stop and forgiveness have nothing to do with it? and how I am destroyed? How you are? How I cannot admit it though I know it!? How I cannot deny it because I cannot admit it!? Cannot admit it, because it is outside of denying!? — Edward Albee

It's sad to know you've gone through it all, or most of it, without ... that the one body you'v wrapped your arms around, the only skin you've ever known, is your own ... and that's it's dry, and not warm. — Edward Albee

When a critic sets himself up as an arbiter of morality, a judge of the matter and not the manner of a work, he is no longer a critic; he is a censor. — Edward Albee

When people can't abide things as they are, when they can't abide the present, they do one of two things ... either they ... either they turn to a contemplation of the past ... or they set about to ... alter the future. And when you want to change something ... YOU BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! — Edward Albee

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

Few sensible authors are happy discussing the creative process
it is, after all, black magic. — Edward Albee

Everybody wants to go see the big hit [at the theatre]. Not because it's any good. Because it's the big hit and everybody wants to be able to talk about the big hit. — Edward Albee

People can't have everything they want. You should know that; it's a rule; people can have some of the things they want, but they can't have everything. — Edward Albee

I am sick of the disparity between things as they are and as they should be. I'm tired.I'm tired of the truth and I'm tired of lying about the truth. — Edward Albee

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. — Edward Albee

I said I was impressed, Martha. I'm beside myself with jealousy. What do you want me to do, throw up? — Edward Albee

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

Martha: ... I cry allllll the time; but deep inside, so no one can see me. I cry all the time. And Georgie cries all the time, too. We both cry all the time, and then what we do, we cry, and we take our tears, and we put 'em in the ice box, in the goddamn ice trays until they're all frozen and then ... we put them ... in our ... drinks. — Edward Albee