Top 90 Edward Albee Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The world is a zoo.”

— Edward Albee

52. “The function of art is to bring people into greater touch with reality, and yet our movie houses and family rooms are jammed with people after as much reality-removal as they can get.”

— Edward Albee

53. “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.”

— Edward Albee

54. “School curricula that ignore the arts produce highly educated Barbarians.”

— Edward Albee

55. “A playwright has a responsibility in his society not to aid it, or comfort it, but to comment and criticize it.”

— Edward Albee

56. “I swear, if you existed I’d divorce you.”

— Edward Albee

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

— Edward Albee

58. “I don’t think I’ve ever written about me. I’m not a character in any of my plays, except that boy, that silent boy that turns up in Three Tall Women.”

— Edward Albee

59. “To write a play one must be born a playwright. Otherwise, you’re starting at a huge disadvantage.”

— Edward Albee

60. “But the landlady is a fat, ugly, mean, stupid, unwashed, misanthropic, cheap, drunken bag of garbage. And you may have noticed that I very seldom use profanity, so I can’t describe her as well as I might.”

— Edward Albee

61. “Martha:... I cry allllll the time; but deep inside, so no one can see me. I cry all the time. And Georgie cries all the time, too. We both cry all the time, and then what we do, we cry, and we take our tears, and we put ’em in the ice box, in the goddamn ice trays until they’re all frozen and then... we put them... in our... drinks.”

— Edward Albee

62. “Progress is a set of assumptions.”

— Edward Albee

63. “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.”

— Edward Albee

64. “I’m not responsible for the commercialization. The people who produce the plays are responsible for it.”

— Edward Albee

65. “Why we are here is an impenetrable question.”

— Edward Albee

66. “Writing should be useful. If it can’t instruct people a little bit more about the responsibilities of consciousness there’s no point in doing it.”

— Edward Albee

67. “Addiction is a repeated temporary... stilling. I am concerned with peace... not mere relief.”

— Edward Albee

68. “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.”

— Edward Albee

69. “There’s no limit to you, is there?”

— Edward Albee

70. “I have been both overpraised and underpraised. I assume by the time I finish writing – and I plan to go on writing until I’m 90 or gaga – it will all equal itself out.”

— Edward Albee

71. “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.”

— Edward Albee

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

— Edward Albee

73. “When a play enters my consciousness, is already a fairly well-developed fetus. I don’t put down a word until the play seems ready to be written.”

— Edward Albee

74. “Your source material is the people you know, not those you don’t know, but every character is an extension of the author’s own personality.”

— Edward Albee

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

— Edward Albee

76. “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.”

— Edward Albee

77. “I am not interested in living in a city where there isn’t a production by Samuel Beckett running.”

— Edward Albee

78. “When you write a play, you make a set of assumptions – that you have something to say, that you know how to say it, that its worth saying, and that maybe someone will come along for the ride.”

— Edward Albee

79. “Audiences and, to a large extent, critics who want less from theater than it is possible for it to give. If everybody’s encouraged to want less, you’ll end up with less.”

— Edward Albee

80. “The government is far more interested in taking, in regulated taking, than in promoting spontaneous generosity.”

— Edward Albee

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

— Edward Albee

82. “Few sensible authors are happy discussing the creative process – it is, after all, black magic.”

— Edward Albee

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

— Edward Albee

84. “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.”

— Edward Albee

85. “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.”

— Edward Albee

86. “There are only two things to write about: life and death.”

— Edward Albee

87. “I am pleased and reassured by the fact that a lot of younger playwrights seem to pay me some attention and gain some nourishment from what I do.”

— Edward Albee

88. “I find relatively little relationship between the work of art and the immediate critical response it gets.”

— Edward Albee

89. “I think that’s foolishness on the part of the playwright to write about himself. People don’t know anything about themselves.”

— Edward Albee

90. “I’m infinitely more involved in the reality of the characters and their situation than I am in everyday life.”

— Edward Albee

91. “Knowing it – knowing it’s true is one thing, but believing what you know... well, there’s the tough part.”

— Edward Albee

92. “I created myself, and I’ll attack anybody I feel like.”

— Edward Albee

93. “There are always going to be more actors than anybody can ever use.”

— Edward Albee

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

— Edward Albee

95. “Maybe it’s a little more pertinent now since the whole concept of evolution is being questioned by the know-nothing Republican right. Yes, maybe the play’s a little more pertinent now.”

— Edward Albee

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

— Edward Albee

97. “Honey: I know these people...”

— Edward Albee