264 Quotes by Edward Albee

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?

Art should never try to be popular.

I suspect that the theme, the nature of the characters, and the method of getting from the beginning of the play to the end is already established in the unconscious.

First, I'll kill the dog with kindness, and if that doesn't work, I'll just kill him.

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

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.

The arts are the only things that separate us from the other animals. The arts are not decorative. ... They are essential to our comprehension of consciousness and ourselves.

If you examine the history of any playwright of the past twenty - five or thirty years - I'm not talking about the comedy boys, I'm talking about the more serious writers - it seems inevitable that almost every one has been encouraged until the critics feel that they have built them up beyond the point where they can control them; then it's time to knock them down again.

Arthur Miller once payed me a great compliment saying that my plays were 'necessary.' I will go one step further and say that Arthur's plays are 'essential'