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.

That's all that counts. People being sorry. Makes you feel better; gives you a sense of dignity, and that's all that's important; a sense of dignity. And it doesn't matter if you don't care or not, either. You got to have a sense of dignity, even if you don't care, 'cause, if you don't have that, civilization's doomed.

My exposure to Beckett and to late O'Neill was probably important right at the time I gave up poetry and the novel.

It's a good idea to have friends both in Heaven and in Hell.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Careers are funny things. They begin mysteriously and, just as mysteriously, they can end; and I am at just the very beginning of what I hope will be a long and satisfying life in the theater. But, whatever happens, I am grateful to have had my novice work received so well, and so quickly.

If Attila the Hun were alive today, he'd be a drama critic.

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.

You gotta have swine to show you where the truffles are.

I am convinced that no one is fully educated without a full grounding in the arts.

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.

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

Never marry for money; you can borrow it cheaper.