There are only two things to write about: life and death. Edward Albee More Quotes by Edward Albee More Quotes From Edward Albee To write a play one must be born a playwright. Otherwise, you're starting at a huge disadvantage. Edward Albee startingplaywriting All plays are social comment to one extent or another. Edward Albee commentsocialplay In the theater, which is a sort of jungle, one does have to be a little bit careful. One mustn't be so rigid or egotistical to think that every comma is sacrosanct. But at the same time there is the danger of losing control and finding that somebody else has opened a play and not you. Edward Albee losing-controlplaythinking Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Edward Albee woolfvirginia As a fairly objective judgment, I do think that my plays as they come out are better than most other things that are put on the same year. But that doesn't make them very good necessarily. Edward Albee playyearsthinking I don't like the climate in which writers have to work in the USA and I think it's my responsibility to talk about it. Edward Albee usaresponsibilitythinking Influence is a matter of selection - both acceptance and rejection. Edward Albee rejectionacceptancematter When I was fifteen I wrote seven hundred pages of an incredibly bad novel - it's a very funny book I still like a lot. Then, when I was nineteen I wrote a couple hundred pages of another novel, which wasn't very good either. I was still determined to be a writer. And since I was a writer, and here I was twenty-nine years old and I wasn't a very good poet and I wasn't a very good novelist, I thought I would try writing a play, which seems to have worked out a little better. Edward Albee couplewritingbook There are a number of contemporary playwrights whom I admire enormously, but that's not at all the same thing as being influenced. Edward Albee playwrightadmirenumbers I find that when my plays are going well, they seem to resemble pieces of music. But if I had to go into specifics about it, I wouldn't be able to. It's merely something that I feel. Edward Albee piecesableplay I do think, or rather I sense that there is a relationship - at least in my own work - between a dramatic structure, the form and sound and shape of a play, and the equivalent structure in music. Both deal with sound, of course, and also with idea, theme. Edward Albee playideasthinking I suppose if you simplify things, it's going to make it easier to understand. Edward Albee simplifyeasierifs I don't pay much attention to how the plays relate thematically to each other. I think that's very dangerous to do, because in the theater one is self-conscious enough without planning ahead or wondering about the thematic relation from one play to the next. One hopes that one is developing, and writing interestingly, and that's where it should end, I think. Edward Albee selfwritingthinking I think it is the responsibility of critics to rely less strenuously on, to use a Hollywood phrase, "what they can live with," and more on an examination of the works of art from an aesthetic and clinical point of view. Edward Albee responsibilityartthinking Well, when I was six years old I decided, not that I was going to be, but with my usual modesty, that I was a writer. Edward Albee six-year-oldsusualyears 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 acceptancetwopeople Curiously enough, the only two plays that I've done very much revision on were the two adaptations - even though the shape of them was pretty much determined by the original work. With my own plays, the only changes, aside from taking a speech out here, putting one in there (if I thought I dwelled on a point a little too long or didn't make it explicit enough), are very minor; but even though they're very minor - having to do with the inability of actors or the unwillingness of the director to go along with me - I've always regretted them. Edward Albee playtwolong If I've been accused a number of times of writing plays where the endings are ambivalent, indeed, that's the way I find life. Edward Albee playwritingnumbers When you're dealing with a symbol in a realistic play, it is also a realistic fact. You must expect the audience's mind to work on both levels, symbolically and realistically. But we're trained so much in pure, realistic theater that it's difficult for us to handle things on two levels at the same time. Edward Albee mindplaytwo Naturally, no writer who's any good at all would sit down and put a sheet of paper in a typewriter and start typing a play unless he knew what he was writing about. Edward Albee typewritersplaywriting
