Edward Albee - People Quotes

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

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
People often ask me how long it takes me to write a play, and I tell them 'all of my life.'

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
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
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
When people don't like the way a play ends, they're likely to blame the play.

Edward Albee
There are two things that a playwright can have. Success or failure. I imagine there are dangers in both. Certainly the danger of being faced with indifference or hostility is discouraging, and it may be that success - acceptance if it's too quick, too lightning-quick - can turn the heads of some people.

Edward Albee
The responsibility of the writer is to be a sort of demonic social critic -- to present the world and people in it as he sees it and say, "Do you like it? If you don't like it, change it.

Edward Albee
My sense of reality and logic is different from most people's.

Edward Albee
Each time I sit down and write a play I try to dismiss from my mind as much as I possibly can the implications of what I've done before, what I'm going to do, what other people think about my work, the failure or success of the previous play. I'm stuck with a new reality that I've got to create.

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
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 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
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
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