Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee IIIis an American playwright known for works such as The Zoo Story, The Sandbox, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. His works are often considered as well-crafted, realistic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and Jean Genet. Younger American playwrights, such as Paula Vogel, credit Albee's daring mix of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth12 March 1928
CountryUnited States of America
Creativity is magic. Don't examine it too closely.
If you have no wounds, how can you know if you're alive?
Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.
It always seems to me better to slough off the answer to a question that I consider to be a terrible invasion of privacy - the kind of privacy that a writer must keep for himself.
There are only two things to write about: life and death.
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.
That's the happiest moment. When it's all done. When we stop. When we can stop.
Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf means who's afraid of the big bad wolf ... who's afraid of living life without false illusions.
I am sick of the disparity between things as they are and as they should be. I'm tired.I'm tired of the truth and I'm tired of lying about the truth.
There are a number of contemporary playwrights whom I admire enormously, but that's not at all the same thing as being influenced.
The act of writing is an act of optimism. You would not take the trouble to do it if you felt that it didn't matter.
A playwright has a responsibility in his society not to aid it, or comfort it, but to comment and criticize it.
I think I was probably wondering, having looked at human beings for a long time, wondering if evolution ever took place. And I still have my doubts.
The one living playwright I admire without any reservation whatsoever is Samuel Beckett. I have funny feelings about almost all the others.