Edward Albee Quotes

One must let the play happen to one; one must let the mind loose to respond as it will, to receive impressions, to sense rather than know, to gather rather than immediately understand.

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.

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?

Writers have this schizophrenic ability to both participate in their lives and, at the same time, observe themselves participating in their lives.

People can't have everything they want. You should know that; it's a rule; people can have some of the things they want, but they can't have everything.

Lady, you can’t fuck a metaphor.

If you spend a hundred bucks, or more, to go to the theatre, something should happen to you. Maybe somebody should be asking you some questions about your values, or about the way you think about things. Maybe you should come out of the theatre, something haven happened to you. Maybe you should be changing, or thinking about changing. But if you just go there, and the only thing you worry about is where you left the damn car, then you wasted a hundred bucks.

I have learned that neither kindness nor cruelty by themselves; independent of each other, creates any effect beyond themselves; and I have learned that the two combined, together, at the same time, are the teaching emotion. And what is gained is loss.

It's one of those things a person has to do; sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly.

Now, here is what I had wanted to happen: I had tried to love, and I had tried to kill, and both had been unsuccessful by themselves.

I have indicated, quite precisely ... by means of commas, periods, semi-colons, dashes and dots ... the speech rhythms. Please observe them carefully, for they were not thrown in, like herbs on a salad, to be mixed about.

I write to find out what I'm talking about.

Q: Do you find quite a difference between the audience at large and the critics as a group? A: Well, one is a group of human beings, one is not.

The only time I'll get good reviews is if I kill myself.

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.