American playwright (1928-2016)
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.
EDWARD ALBEE
Saturday Review, May 4, 1966
Musical beds is the faculty sport around here.
EDWARD ALBEE
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
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
The American Dream
If you have no wounds, how can you know if you're alive?
EDWARD ALBEE
The Play About the Baby
If Attila the Hun were alive today, he'd be a drama critic.
EDWARD ALBEE
Theater Week, 1988
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
Stretching My Mind
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
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
You gotta have a swine to show you where the truffles are.
EDWARD ALBEE
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
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
Conversations with 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
National Observer, Apr. 5, 1965
I think that's foolishness on the part of the playwright to write about himself. People don't know anything about themselves.
EDWARD ALBEE
interview, The Believer
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
Stretching My Mind
Every monster was a man first.
EDWARD ALBEE
Tiny Alice
Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested.
EDWARD ALBEE
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
The most profound indication of social malignancy ... no sense of humor. None of the monoliths could take a joke.
EDWARD ALBEE
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
That's the happiest moment. When it's all done. When we stop. When we can stop.
EDWARD ALBEE
Three Tall Women
Time passes. You're not as ... recognizable now as you were.
EDWARD ALBEE
Occupant
I'm not responsible for the commercialization. The people who produce the plays are responsible for it.
EDWARD ALBEE
interview, The Believer
Progress is a set of assumptions.
EDWARD ALBEE
Seascape
Unless you are terribly, terribly careful, you run the danger--without even knowing it is happening to you--of slipping into the fatal error of reflecting the public taste instead of creating it. Your responsibility is to the public consciousness, not the public view of itself.
EDWARD ALBEE
Stretching My Mind