Latest August Wilson Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• 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

• 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

• The impulse to write the poem, that impulse is a great dramatic impulse. But hell, anybody could write a play. I do know this: all writers are not dramatists. You may be a great writer, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're a dramatist. Very few people have done both.

  August Wilson

  Writing, Mean, Play

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

• 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.

• 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.

  August Wilson

  Attitude, Character, Play

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

• 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

• 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.