Edward Albee Quotes

It's very easy for me to watch a performance and just speak on it as I see it.

I think what people think about my films depends on the film they see. It's all different and opinions are all different.

I guess you'd have to say that sometimes the audience is smarter than the critics.

Sometimes it occurs to me that the job of a serious cultural critic mostly consists in telling the generality of people that their opinions - on films, on books, on all manner of widgets, gadgets and even the latest electronic fidgets - simply aren't up to scratch.

Don't listen to experts.

Experts often possess more data than judgment.

Normally I don't watch myself, because I'm not very objective.

The thing we call critics are not really reviewers, they are not really critics. They don't have the discipline to write what we would term as critique - it's really just reviewers. They have a common man kind of taste. If you watch them overall, they are not different from the box-office. That's my view.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

I actually think that one of the most dangerous phenomena is the bowing to expertise, whether it's in international relations or how to use technologies.

Don't be intimidated by people who seem to be experts. Hear their points of view and get their judgements. But at the end of day, you've got to make a judgement because it's not their life that's going to be affected so much as your future.

No computer is ever going to ask a new, reasonable question. It takes trained people to do that.

Have you ever noticed how most critics disagree with the public? That should tell you a lot about critics.

I don't take reviews very seriously, but in their totality I think they are representative of how the audience feels, and of what their reaction is. There's always one guy who doesn't get it.

People who've read my reviews know my tastes, know how I approach a book, know my background. I can write with believable authority. It doesn't mean I'm always right.

Critics for established venues are vetted by editors; they usually demonstrate a certain objectivity; and they come with known backgrounds and specialized knowledge.

How do you rate works of genius? Partly by personal inclination, partly by accepted wisdom, partly by popularity.

I don't read the critics.

But you know, really, if you think about it Roger and I and all critics really have one absolute essential part of our credentials and that is that you believe that that is actually what we think.

I don't think the audience always listens to the critics. That's been proven time and time again.

If a doctor said you had stomach cancer, would you consult Rush Limbaugh for a second opinion? Of course, that sounds like nonsense, but many Americans have no qualms about listening to political commentators and untrained activists when it comes to even more complex scientific questions.

I never read reviews of something I want to see.

Anything that's memorable about a movie is often what a test audience will object to because they're being asked to be experts. They just compare the film they finished watching to all of the other films that they've seen.

The culture of independent film criticism has totally gone down the drain and this seems to come with the territory of the consumer age that we are now living in.

Will Doctor Franklin be so good as to peruse it and suggest such alterations as his more enlarged view of the subject will dictate?