Quotes from Edward Albee

Old people whimper, and cry, and belch, and make great hollow rumbling sounds at table; old people wake up in the middle of the night screaming, and find out they haven't even been asleep; and when old people are asleep, they try to wake up, and they can't... not for the longest time.

Never marry for money; you can borrow it cheaper.

Very few people who met my adoptive mother in the last 20 years of her life could abide her, while many people who have seen my play find her fascinating. Heavens, what have I done?!

School curricula that ignore the arts produce highly educated Barbarians

Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.

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.

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.

Im not suggesting that the play is without fault; all of my plays are imperfect, Im rather happy to say-it leaves me something to do.

The most profound indication of social malignancy ... no sense of humor. None of the monoliths could take a joke.

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

American critics are like American universities. They both have dull and half-dead faculties.

I am a doctor. A.B.... M.A.... PH.D....ABMAPHID! Abmaphid has been variously described as a wasting disease of the frontal lobes, and as a wonder drug. It is actually both.I'm really very mistrustful.

Awww, 'tis the refuge we take when the unreality of the world weighs too heavy on our tiny heads.

There's no limit to you, is there?

Creativity is magic, don't examine it too closely.

who tolerates, which is intolerable; who is kind, which is cruel; who understands, which is beyond comprehension...

That's what happens in plays, yes? The shit hits the fan. --Edward Albee

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

George: Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? Martha: I am, George. I am.

I swear if you existed I'd divorce you.

It's sad to know you've gone through it all, or most of it, without… that the one body you'v wrapped your arms around, the only skin you've ever known, is your own… and that's it's dry, and not warm.

We proceed in this society of ours on the possibly valid but untrue assumption that the public knows what it wants-- indeed, that it is given sufficient information about what is available to make such a judgment. And then we jump, irresponsibly and absurdly, to the notion that there is a valid relationship between what the public wants and what it should want.

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