E Albee Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

Knowing it--knowing it's true is one thing, but believing what you know... well, there's the tough part. — Edward Albee

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

If you have no wounds, how can you know if you're alive? — Edward Albee

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

You don't see anything, do you? You see everything but the goddamn mind; you see all the little specs and crap, but you don't see what goes on, do you? — 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 have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor. — Edward Albee

A play is fiction - and fiction is fact distilled into truth. — Edward Albee

You're alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it? — 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

Art has an obligation to offend — 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

Who tolerates, which is intolerable; who is kind, which is cruel; who understands, which is beyond comprehension ... — 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

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

There's no limit to you, is there? — Edward Albee

When you write a play, you make a set of assumptions
that you have something to say, that you know how to say it, that its worth saying, and that maybe someone will come along for the ride. — Edward Albee

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

Audiences and, to a large extent, critics who want less from theater than it is possible for it to give. If everybody's encouraged to want less, you'll end up with less. — 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

But the landlady is a fat, ugly, mean, stupid, unwashed, misanthropic, cheap, drunken bag of garbage. And you may have noticed that I very seldom use profanity, so I can't describe her as well as I might. — Edward Albee

Man hates something in himself. He has been able to defeat every natural obstacle but himself he cannot win over unless he kills every individual. And this self-hate which goes so closely in hand with self-love is what I wrote about. - in a letter to George Albee — John Steinbeck

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 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. — Edward Albee