August Wilson quotes

Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. (August Wilson)
All art is political in the sense that it serves someone's politics. View quote
August Wilson
All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other. View quote
August Wilson
Have a belief in yourself that is bigger than anyone's disbelief. View quote
August Wilson
Blues is the bedrock of everything I do. All the characters in my plays, their ideas and their attitudes, the stance that they adopt in the world, are all ideas and attitudes that are expressed in the blues. View quote
August Wilson
You got to be right with yourself before you can be right with anybody else. View quote
August Wilson
Blacks have traditionally had to operate in a situation where whites have set themselves up as the custodians of the black experience. View quote
August Wilson
My influences have been what I call my four Bs - the primary one being the blues, then Borges, Baraka, and Bearden. View quote
August Wilson
A novelist writes a novel, and people read it. But reading is a solitary act. While it may elicit a varied and personal response, the communal nature of the audience is like having five hundred people read your novel and respond to it at the same time. I find that thrilling. View quote
August Wilson
I work as an artist, and I think the audience of one, which is the self, and I have to satisfy myself as an artist. So I always say that I write for the same people that Picasso painted for. I think he painted for himself. View quote
August Wilson
I dont write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but thats not why I write. (August Wilson)
I been with strangers all day and they treated me like family. I come in here to family and you treat me like a stranger. View quote
August Wilson
The blues are important primarily because they contain the cultural expression and the cultural response to blacks in America and to the situation that they find themselves in. And contained in the blues is a philosophical system at work. And as part of the oral tradition, this is a way of passing along information. View quote
August Wilson
I done learned my mistake and learned to do what's right by it. You still trying to get something for nothing. Life don't owe you nothing. You owe it to yourself. - Troy. View quote
August Wilson
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 to something else. View quote
August Wilson
I first got involved in theater in 1968, at the height of a social tumult. I was a poet. View quote
August Wilson
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 it's going to be about a piano, but that's it. I slowly discover who the characters are as I go along. View quote
August Wilson
I had always been fascinated with Napoleon because he was a self-made emperor; Victor Hugo said, 'Napoleon's will to power,' and it was the title of my paper. And I submitted it to my teacher, and he didn't think I had written it. And he wanted me to explain it to him. View quote
August Wilson
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 place in the world. You just start from where you find yourself. View quote
August Wilson
When the sins of our fathers visit us We do not have to play host. We can banish them with forgiveness As God, in his His Largeness and Laws. View quote
August Wilson
The real struggle has been since Africans first set foot on the continent, an affirmation of the value of one's self. And I think if, in order to participate in American society, in order to accomplish some of the things which the black middle class has accomplished, if you have had to give up that self in order to accomplish that, then you are not making an affirmation of the value of the African being. You are saying that in order to do that I must become someone else, I must become like someone else... (August Wilson)
Jazz in itself is not struggling...That is, the music itself is not struggling. It and the baseball history you talk about are two anchors of the African American cultural community. It's the attitude that's in trouble. My plays insist that we should not forget or toss away our history. View quote
August Wilson
I think it was the ability of the theater to communicate ideas and extol virtues that drew me to it. And also I was, and remain, fascinated by the idea of an audience as a community of people who gather willingly to bear witness. A novelist writes a novel and people read it. But reading is a solitary act. While it may elicit a varied and personal response, the communal nature of the audience is like having five hundred people read your novel and respond to it at the same time. I find that thrilling. View quote
August Wilson
I write for myself, and my goal is bringing that world and that experience of black Americans to life on the stage and giving it a space there. View quote
August Wilson
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 thing in your calendar, that month is gone. View quote
August Wilson