I usually think about a play anywhere from six months to a year and a half before I sit down to write it out. Edward Albee More Quotes by Edward Albee More Quotes From 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 playwritingyears 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. Edward Albee truthwritingreality I said I was impressed, Martha. I'm beside myself with jealousy. What do you want me to do, throw up? Edward Albee impressedwantsaid And the west, encumbered by crippling alliances, and hardened with a morality too rigid to accommodate itself to the swing of events, must ..... eventually ..... fall. Edward Albee swingseventsfall You want to dance with me, angel tits? Edward Albee angelwant 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 agewritingpeople I swear, if you existed I'd divorce you. Edward Albee divorceswearifs 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 assumptionplaywriting 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 unionsgoing-awaystuff I have been both overpraised and underpraised. I assume by the time I finish writing -- and I plan to go on writing until I'm 90 or gaga -- it will all equal itself out. Edward Albee assuminggoes-onwriting It is a lazy public which promotes a slothful and irresponsible theater. Edward Albee irresponsiblelazytheater Careers are funny things. They begin mysteriously and, just as mysteriously, they can end. Edward Albee funny-thingscareersends The government is far more interested in taking, in regulated taking, than in promoting spontaneous generosity. Edward Albee spontaneousgenerositygovernment You...you've been here quite a long time, haven't you?" What? Oh...yes. Ever since I married What's-her-name. Uh, Martha. Even before that. Forever. Dashed hopes, and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested. How do you like that for a declension, young man? Edward Albee namesmenlong 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 abletalkingpeople I'm not responsible for the commercialization. The people who produce the plays are responsible for it. Edward Albee responsibleplaypeople 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 eventsplaycharacter In the two or three or four months that it takes me to write a play, I find that the reality of the play is a great deal more alive for me than what passes for reality. I'm infinitely more involved in the reality of the characters and their situation than I am in everyday life. The involvement is terribly intense. Edward Albee writingcharacterreality I find that in the course of the day when I'm writing, after three or four hours of intense work, I have a splitting headache, and I have to stop. Because the involvement, which is both creative and self-critical, is so intense that I've got to stop doing it. Edward Albee creativeselfwriting Sometimes I think the experience of a play is finished for me when I finish writing it. If it weren't for the need to make a living, I don't know whether I'd have the plays produced. Edward Albee playwritingthinking
