Do you know what a playwright is? A playwright is someone who lets his guts hang out on the stage.
Edward AlbeeRead
Few sensible authors are happy discussing the creative process--it is, after all, black magic.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The creative process is often mysterious and difficult to articulate, akin to 'black magic'.
In this quote, Edward Albee suggests that the act of creating art is a complicated and often enigmatic process that defies logical explanation. Authors and artists may struggle to discuss their own creative journeys, as they can feel like they are tapping into something mysterious and profound, much like a form of sorcery or black magic that cannot be fully understood or conveyed.
Themes
Creative ProcessArtMysteryExpressionCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
During a workshop on writing, someone might quote Albee to illustrate the challenges authors face when discussing their craft.
More from Edward Albee
All quotes →When a critic sets himself up as an arbiter of morality, a judge of the matter and not the manner of a work, he is no longer a critic; he is a censor.
Edward AlbeeRead
I am convinced that no one is fully educated without a full grounding in the arts.
Edward AlbeeRead
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.
Edward AlbeeRead
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.
Edward AlbeeRead
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 AlbeeRead
Similar quotes
I hope my recordings of my own works won't inhibit other people's performances. The brutal fact is that one doesn't always get the exact tempo one wants, although one improves with experience.
Aaron CoplandRead
Fiction is such a world of freedom, it's wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.
Alice WalkerRead
In good films, there is always a directness that entirely frees us from the itch to interpret.
Susan SontagRead
The writing life requires courage, patience, persistence, empathy, openness, and the ability to deal with rejection. It requires the willingness to be alone with oneself. To be gentle with oneself. To look at the world without blinders on. To observe and withstand what one sees. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks. To be willing to fail - not just once, but again and again, over the course of a lifetime.
Dani ShapiroRead
If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready’.
David MitchellRead
I try to turn a place on film into a mental state. I always have three or four locations that I repeat and return to in a film, to make it more mythic. But my fiction films are relatively subjective stories, experienced though one character. And that always justifies a little stylisation in terms of landscape.
Pawel PawlikowskiRead