Top August Wilson Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

August Wilson Biography

August Wilson (April 27, 1945 – October 2, 2005) was an American playwright whose work included a series of ten plays, The Pittsburgh Cycle, for which he received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Each work in the series is set in a different decade, and depicts comic and tragic aspects of the African-American experience in the 20th century.

Read about August Wilson in Wikipedia

Random Authors

August Wilson Quotes

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.

Character, Characters, Piano, Play, Slowly

All you need is the blues. To me, the blues is the book, it's the bible, it's everything.

Bible, Blues, Book, Everything, Needs

Your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel.

Angel, Cause, Demons, Fuel, Pain, Strength

My greatest influence has been the blues. And that's a literary influence, because I think the blues is the best literature that we as black Americans have.

Thinking, Black, Literature, Influence

I first got involved in theater in 1968, at the height of a social tumult. I was a poet.

Firsts, Height, Poet, Tumult

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.

Awards, Calendar, Focus, Month, Writing

I believe in the American theatre. I believe in its power to inform about the human condition, its power to heal. . . its power to uncover the truths we wrestle from uncertain and sometimes unyielding realities.

Believe, Human, Reality, Theatre, Uncover

You get to the point where your demons, which are terrifying, get smaller and smaller and you get bigger and bigger.

Bigger, Demon, Demons, Smaller, Terrifying

Freedom is heavy. You got to put your shoulder to freedom. Put your shoulder to it and hope your back holds up.

Back, Heavy, Hope, Shoulder, Shoulders

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.

Bringing, Giving, Life, Space, World, Writing

We were land-based agrarian people from Africa. We were uprooted from Africa, and we spent 200 years developing our culture as black Americans. And then we left the South. We uprooted ourselves and attempted to transplant this culture to the pavements of the industrialized North. And it was a transplant that did not take. I think if we had stayed in the South, we would have been a stronger people. And because the connection between the South of the 20's, 30's and 40's has been broken, it's very difficult to understand who we are.

Agrarian, Land, Take, Thinking, Years

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.

Adopt, Attitude, Character, Everything, Play, Stance

The details of our struggle to survive and prosper, in what has been a difficult and sometimes bitter relationship with a system of laws and practices that deny us access to the tools necessary for productive and industrious life, are available to any serious student of history or sociology.

Deny, Law, Practice, Sociology, Struggle, Survive

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 by writing about black people, you are not limiting yourself. The experiences of African-Americans are as wide open as God's closet.

Artist, Limiting, People, Responsibility, Wide, Writing

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.

Hand, Hands, Happiness, Laughter, Love, World

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 -

Done, Life, Mistake, Nothing, Right, Trying

I don't go by what the law say. The law's liable to say anything. I go by if it's right or not. It don't matter what the law say. I take and look at it for myself.

Law, Looks, Matter, Right, Say Anything, Take

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 life: Asian life, European life, certainly black life. My plays are about love, honor, duty, betrayal - things humans have written about since the beginning of time.

Betrayal, European, Ideas, Life, Play

All art is political in the sense that it serves someone's politics.

Art, Political, Art Is, Sense, Serves

I dont write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but thats not why I write.

Believe, Change, Particularly, Social, Writing

1