SOURCE: "Introduction," in Three Tall Women: A Play in Two Acts, by Edward Albee, Dutton, 1994, pp. 3-5.

In the following remarks prefacing the published version of Three Tall Women, the playwright discusses the origin of the play in his experiences with his adoptive mother.

People often ask me how long it takes me to write a play, and I tell them "all of my life." I know that's not the answer they're after—what they really want is some sense of the time between the first glimmer of the play in my mind and the writing down, and perhaps the duration of the writing down—but "all of my life" is the truest answer I can give, for it is the only one which is exact, since the thinking about the play and the putting it to paper vary so from play to play.

Few sensible authors are...