Quotes from Edward Albee

The notion that women are less aesthetically profound and innovative than men--just not very important, if you know what I mean--doubtless spreads back to our beginnings as upright animals: the males hunted and killed for the family while the females stayed home in the cave and tended the strange little creatures they were giving birth to.

If you're willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly.

I swear . . . if you existed I'd divorce you.

When you're a kid you use the [pornographic playing] cards as a substitute for a real experience, and when you're older you use real experience as a substitute for the fantasy.

Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf.

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

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

Comedy is the last refuge of the nonconformist mind.

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

You're alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?

What I mean by an educated taste is someone who has the same tastes that I have.

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

What could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it

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

Martha: Truth or illusion, George; you don't know the difference. George: No, but we must carry on as though we did. Martha: Amen.

I said I was impressed, Martha. I'm beside myself with jealousy. What do you want me to do, throw up?

Dashed hopes and good intentions. Good, better, best, bested.

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

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.

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.

If you have no wounds, how can you know if you're alive?

The world is a zoo

Martha: Oh, I like your anger. I think that's what I like about you most. Your anger.

Read the great stuff, but read the stuff that isn't so great, too. Great stuff is very discouraging. If you read only Beckett and Chekhov, you'll go away and only deliver telegrams for Western Union.