August Wilson Quotes

55 quotes in 763 categories

• Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.
• Your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel.
• The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is.
• I'm trying to take culture and put it onstage, demonstrate it is capable of sustaining you. There is no idea that can't be contained by…
• I ain't never found no place for me to fit. Seem like all I do is start over. It ain't nothing to find no starting…
• You got to take the crookeds with the straights. That's what Papa used to say.
• As soon as white folks say a play's good, the theater is jammed with blacks and whites.
• Between speeches and awards, you can find something to do every other week. It's hard to write. Your focus gets splintered. Once you put one…
• Blacks have traditionally had to operate in a situation where whites have set themselves up as the custodians of the black experience.
• For me, the original play becomes an historical document: This is where I was when I wrote it, and I have to move on now…
• Suffice it to say, I'm not poor.
• I first got involved in theater in 1968, at the height of a social tumult. I was a poet.
• I know some things when I start. I know, let's say, that the play is going to be a 1970s or a 1930s play, and…
• What comes forth from you as an artist cannot be controlled. But you have responsibilities as a global citizen. Your history dictates your duty. And…
• I found out life's hard but it ain't impossible....
• I dont write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but thats not why I write.
• I believe in the American theatre. I believe in its power to inform about the human condition, its power to heal ... its power to…
• When I first started writing plays I couldn't write good dialogue because I didn't respect how black people talked. I thought that in order to…
• You are responsible for the world that you live in. It is not government's responsibility. It is not your school's or your social club's or…
• You get to the point where your demons, which are terrifying, get smaller and smaller and you get bigger and bigger.

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