Edward Albee Quotes

I love fantasy. I love horror. I love musicals. Whatever doesn't really happen in life is what I'm interested in. As a way of commenting on everything that does happen in life, because ultimately the only thing I'm really interested in is people.

The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink - and in drinking understand themselves.

I think Queen songs are pure escapism, like going to see a good film.

I know the world that I am painting is not a reality. It is a whim, an entertainment to provoke something in people, whether as escapism or relief. I think that is very valid.

Poetry is a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right.

The great thing about art on any level is that it can speak to all people if it's achieved properly.

Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.

I don't think you go to a play to forget, or to a movie to be distracted. I think life generally is a distraction and that going to a movie is a way to get back, not go away.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.

Movies aren't just supposed to be a representation of reality. They're supposed to be an art.

You want to make entertainment sometimes, and sometimes you want to make art, because I think the way we understand ourselves as human beings is through art, and the way we process emotions - I know I do - is through recognizing experiences on screen or in novels or in paintings.

Science explains the world, but only Art can reconcile us to it.

When you start to think of the arts as not this thing that is going to get you somewhere in terms of becoming an artist or becoming famous or whatever it is that people do, but rather a way of making being in the world not just bearable, but fascinating, then it starts to get interesting again.

Art must take reality by surprise. It takes those moments which are for us merely a moment, plus a moment, plus another moment, and arbitrarily transforms them into a special series of moments held together by a major emotion.

What is art but the denial of life?

Art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstone of our judgement.

Photography is nothing-it's life that interests me.

Art is mind and heart and touch as much and more than it is mere instrument, technique - without which however it cannot exist at all.

Every single bit of entertainment is escapism. It's because you are saying, "Let's see what this other person's life is like." And also it's beyond escapism, its entertainment and art as such can elevate the species. The entertainer supposedly is the muse. They're the ones who tell you what is wrong with society in a humorous way. They're the ones who do an expose about this or a documentary about that about the injustice of this. So it can be a very powerful medium.

The word “art” is something the West has never understood. Art is supposed to be a part of a community. Like, scholars are supposed to be a part of a community... Art is to decorate people’s houses, their skin, their clothes, to make them expand their minds, and it’s supposed to be right in the community, where they can have it when they want it... It’s supposed to be as essential as a grocery store... that’s the only way art can function naturally.

The only way an artist can communicate with the world at large is on the level of feeling.

Art is the act of triggering deep memories, of what it means to be fully human.

What is art? (...) Like a declaration of love: the consciousness of our dependence on each other. A confession. An unconscious act that none the less reflects the true meaning of life—love and sacrifice.

I think that's what all art is for - for people to express what it is to be human. That's the purpose of it.

If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be?