August Wilson Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Blacks have traditionally had to operate in a situation where whites have set themselves up as the custodians of the black experience.

  August Wilson

  Black, Experience, Custodians

  22 Copy quote

• There's no reason why you can't say "August Wilson, playwright" even though all of my work, every single play, is about black Americans, about black American culture, about the black experience in America. I write about the black experience of men, or I write about black folks. That's who I am. In the same manner that Chekhov wrote about the Russians, I write about blacks. I couldn't do anything else. I wouldn't do anything else.

  August Wilson

  Writing, Men, Who I Am

  27 Copy quote

• You are responsible for the world that you live in.

  August Wilson

  World, Responsible

  8 Copy quote

• I think that's the core of black aesthetics: the ability to improvise. That is what has enabled our [black people's] survival.

  August Wilson

  Thinking, People, Black

  Interview with Miles Marshall Lewis, believermag.com. November 1, 2004.

  11 Copy quote

• Life don't owe you nothing.

  August Wilson

  Life

  August Wilson (1991). “Three Plays”, Pittsburgh, Pa. : University of Pittsburgh Press

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• I may be personable, but I assure you I am a lion.

  August Wilson

  Lions, May

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• If you want to support a writer, produce the first five plays he writes.

  August Wilson

  Writing, Play, Support

  4 Copy quote

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

  August Wilson

  Book, Needs

  Source: www.believermag.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  August Wilson

  Struggle, Practice, Law

  August Wilson, Larry Fishburne, Samuel G Freedman, Marion Isaac McClinton, Tony Kushner (2007). “August Wilson Century Cycle”

  4 Copy quote

• As long as the colored man look to white folks to put the crown on what he say . . . as long as he looks to white folks for approval . . . then he ain't never gonna find out who he is and what he's about.

  August Wilson

  Men, White, Long

  August Wilson (1991). “Three Plays”, Pittsburgh, Pa. : University of Pittsburgh Press

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• 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.

  August Wilson

  Reading, Writing, People

  6 Copy quote

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

  August Wilson

  Art, Political, Art Is

  19 Copy quote

• 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.

  August Wilson

  Law, Say Anything, Matter

  August Wilson (2007). “The Piano Lesson”

  9 Copy quote

• My influences have been what I call my four Bs - the primary one being the blues, then Borges, Baraka, and Bearden.

  August Wilson

  Four, Influence, Borges

  9 Copy quote

• I'm a black American playwright. I couldn't be anything else. I make my art out of black American culture; they're all cut out of the same cloth. That's who I am; that's who I write about.

  August Wilson

  Art, Writing, Cutting

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  August Wilson

  Writing, Artist, Thinking

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  August Wilson

  Thinking, Black, Literature

  Interview with Miles Marshall Lewis, believermag.com. November 1, 2004.

  14 Copy quote

• I think that as a playwright, if I detail that environment, then I'm taking away something from them [designers]. I'm taking away their creativity and their ability to have input themselves, not just to follow what the playwright has written. So I do a minimum set description and let the designers create within that.

  August Wilson

  Creativity, Thinking, Input

  9 Copy quote

• So somehow, things that seem extraneous to the play in reality are not. The scene lasts 37 minutes, and you only need 12 minutes of that for the plot. But if you pull the rest of it out, it's not my play.

  August Wilson

  Reality, Play, Plot

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  August Wilson

  Thinking, Years, Land

  7 Copy quote

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

  August Wilson

  Believe, Writing, Social

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• I don't write for a particular audience.

  August Wilson

  Writing, Audience, Particular

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• Death ain't nothing but a fastball on the outside corner.

  August Wilson

  Death, Corners, Fastballs

  August Wilson, Larry Fishburne, Samuel G Freedman, Tony Kushner, Romulus Linney (2007). “August Wilson Century Cycle”

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• 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.

  August Wilson

  Funny Family, Like Family, Stranger

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• The director works as an interpretive artist, but he's still an artist, so you also have to give him room to create and to put his vision of the play or his translation or interpretation of the material on the stage.

  August Wilson

  Artist, Play, Giving

  6 Copy quote

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