Quotes by Edward Albee

“The difference between critics and audiences is that one is a group of humans and one is not”

“A play is fiction-and fiction is fact distilled into truth.”

“Sometimes its necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly”

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

“The thing that makes a creative person is to be creative and that is all there is to it.”

“Your source material is the people you know, not those you dont know, but every character is an extension of the authors own personality.”

“I have a fine sense of the ridiculous, but no sense of humor.”

“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.”

“If Attila the Hun were alive today, hed be a drama critic.”

Martha: Truth or illusion, George; you dont know the difference.George: No, but we must carry on as though we did.Martha: Amen.

I write to find out what Im talking about.

What could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadnt lived it

George, who is out somewhere there in the dark, who is good to me - whom I revile, who can keep learning the games we play as quickly as I can change them. Who can make me happy and I do not wish to be happy. And yes, I do wish to be happy. George and Martha: Sad, sad, sad. Whom I will not forgive for having come to rest; for having seen me and having said: “Yes, this will do”. Who has made the hideous, the hurting, the insulting mistake of loving… me, and must be punished for it. George and Martha… Sad, sad, sad.

Martha: Oh, I like your anger. I think thats what I like about you most. Your anger.

... what I wanted to get at is the value difference between pornographic playing cards when youre a kid, and pornographic playing cards when youre older. Its that when youre a kid you use the cards as a substitute for a real experience, and when youre older you use real experience as a substitute for the fantasy.

In my mind, Martha, you are buried in cement right up to your neck. No… right up to your nose… that’s much quieter.

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.

To all of you who have made my being alive so wonderful, so exciting and so full, my thanks and all my love.

I am not interested in living in a city where there isnt a production by Samuel Beckett running.

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 having 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.