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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 -

August Wilson

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August Wilson
Age: 60 †
Born: 1945
Born: April 27
Died: 2005
Died: October 2
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Frederick August Kittel
Frederick August Kittel
Jr.
August Kittel
Life
Mistake
Stills
Still
Nothing
Done
Right
Trying
Troy
Something
Learned

More quotes by August Wilson

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Freedom is heavy. You got to put your shoulder to freedom. Put your shoulder to it and hope your back holds up.
August Wilson
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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
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Your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel.
August Wilson
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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
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Death ain't nothing but a fastball on the outside corner.
August Wilson
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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.
August Wilson
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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.
August Wilson
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Style ain't nothing but keeping the same idea from beginning to end. Everybody got it.
August Wilson
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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
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All of art is a search for ways of being, of living life more fully.
August Wilson
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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 make art out of their dialogue I had to change it, make it into something different. Once I learned to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I let them start talking.
August Wilson
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I think all in all, one thing a lot of plays seem to be saying is that we need to, as black Americans, to make a connection with our past in order to determine the kind of future we're going to have. In other words, we simply need to know who we are in relation to our historical presence in America.
August Wilson
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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
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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.
August Wilson
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I found out life's hard but it ain't impossible.
August Wilson
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I don't write for a particular audience.
August Wilson
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What do you do with your legacy, and how do you best put it to use?
August Wilson
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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
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You are responsible for the world that you live in.
August Wilson
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All you need is the blues. To me, the blues is the book, it's the bible, it's everything.
August Wilson