Interviewer: You have said that it is through the actual process of writing that you eventually come to know the theme of your play. Sometimes you’ve admitted that even when you have finished a play you don’t have any specific idea about its theme. What about that?

Albee: Naturally, no writer who’s any good at all would sit down and put a sheet of paper in a typewriter and start typing a play unless he knew what he was writing about. But at the same time, writing has got to be an act of discovery. Finding out things about what one is writing about. To a certain extent I imagine a play is completely finished in my mind–in my case at any rate–without my knowing it, before I sit down to write. So in that sense, I suppose, writing a play is finding out what the play is. I always…

The sunlight thins, the view empties:
Back from a walk, I lie under the front eaves.
Fairweather clouds like torn fluff
And the new moon like a whetted sickle.
A zest for the fields and moors stirs in me,
The ambition for robes of office has long since turned to loathing.
While I live, shall I take your hand again
Sighing that our years will soon be done?

translated A.C. Graham

Read, read, read. Read everything–trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it.  Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.

sometimes late at night
when the words don’t come to paper
and my mind drifts too far from the reading
I entertain myself by exploring
a past that could have been
if I made other choices along the way
to where I am today
no good can come from this
but it does reaffirm the present
since whatever I could have done
or might have been
would not have allowed me to know
some of the people whose lives
intersected with mine
and having those people, those memories
still alive in my heart
was worth whatever price I paid
to get here
staring somewhat resolutely
toward the next decade
of what is this life

he feels fine
I feel fine
going to Carolina
in my mind
or at least
what Carolina is
to me
and James
he’s going with me
singing away the blues
the sun shines
the moon shines
a highway stretches
out there
before us
forever
so saddle up
James and me
we are headed
for Carolina
and home cooked meals
lazy afternoons
our mothers setting the table
our brothers teasing
each other
and James and me
we got a girl
there in Carolina
in our mind

“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”

that look in your eye
just before sunset
when the night held more promise
than the day
it might have lasted forever
in some other lifetime
wouldn’t that have been something
to laugh about
in a corner booth
in heaven
roses, kid
in an always spring