“Read the great stuff, but read the stuff that isn't so great, too. Great stuff is very discouraging. If you read only Beckett and Chekhov, you'll go away and only deliver telegrams for Western Union.”

—  Edward Albee

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Read the great stuff, but read the stuff that isn't so great, too. Great stuff is very discouraging. If you read only B…" by Edward Albee?
Edward Albee photo
Edward Albee 32
American playwright 1928–2016

Related quotes

Peter Greenaway photo

“I've just been reading -- stuff to make your hair curl -- you go in that toilet -- that's the sort of stuff people read -- not this sort of thing -- don't you feel out of touch? Does this stuff make money? I bet you're the only person to have read this book -- but I bet you every man in this restaurant has had a read of that stuff in there… makes you think, doesn't it?”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Albert
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

Maria Dahvana Headley photo

“I read stuff. Books are not my only friends, but we’re friendly. So there.”

Maria Dahvana Headley (1977) American writer

Source: Magonia

“This is great stuff, but does it have to be so complicated?”

Elliott Organick (1925–1985) American computer scientist

Often remarked when hearing about new technological advances; quoted in Communications of the ACM http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=6325, pg. 231.

“I am so constituted that I had rather read bad stuff than nothing.”

Burton Rascoe (1892–1957) American writer

As quoted in the dedication to The Pumpkin Coach (1935) by Louis Paul

Jules Verne photo

“The Great Architect of the universe built it of good stuff.”

Jules Verne book A Journey to the Center of the Earth

Source: Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Ch. XXXI in the French text, Tr. William Butcher (1992)

Robert Maynard Hutchins photo

“If many great books seem unreadable and unintelligible … it may be because we have not for a long time learned to read by reading them. Great books teach people not only how to read them, but how to read all other books.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Jack Osbourne photo

“I'd read things, like people criticizing me. But no one likes to read stuff about that, and probably the main thing that was getting to me was me mum's illness.”

Jack Osbourne (1985) Son of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne

MTV.com Jack Talks About His Addiction and Recovery

Paul J. McAuley photo

“I read in some of it (the reference is to Shakespeare). It’s not so bad when you get used to it, pretty archaic though. Why do you like old stuff like this?”

Paul J. McAuley (1955) British writer

“It has everything in it, if you look hard enough,” Dorthy said, taking the sheaf. “Love, jealousy, avarice, loyalty, murder, madness...I find it reassuring that human nature is so constant.”

Chapter 3 “The Keep” (p. 171; ellipses in the original)
Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988)

“I read all these books and I had the feeling that just reading things is not enough. I also wanted to create my own stuff, to create something new.”

Caucher Birkar (1978) Kurdish mathematician

"An innovator who brings order to an infinitude of equations" Quanta Magazine (2018)

Related topics