Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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.
August Wilson
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Human
Truths
Humans
Heal
Sometimes
Condition
Unyielding
Believe
Theatre
Uncover
Conditions
Wrestle
American
Inform
Reality
Realities
Power
Uncertain
More quotes by August Wilson
. . . what happened, of course, was that I was writing a play set in the 1940's that was supposed to be somehow representative of black American life, and I didn't have any women in there. And I knew that wasn't going to work.
August Wilson
All of art is a search for ways of being, of living life more fully.
August Wilson
Death ain't nothing but a fastball on the outside corner.
August Wilson
I cried a river of tears but he was too heavy to float on them. So I dragged him with me these years across an ocean.
August Wilson
My influences have been what I call my four Bs - the primary one being the blues, then Borges, Baraka, and Bearden.
August Wilson
I dont write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but thats not why I write.
August Wilson
Freedom is heavy. You got to put your shoulder to freedom. Put your shoulder to it and hope your back holds up.
August Wilson
Jazz in itself is not struggling. That is, the music itself is not struggling... It's the attitude that's in trouble. My plays insist that we should not forget or toss away our history.
August Wilson
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
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
I first got involved in theater in 1968, at the height of a social tumult. I was a poet.
August Wilson
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
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
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
Life don't owe you nothing.
August Wilson
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
Have a belief in yourself that is bigger than anyone's disbelief.
August Wilson
I've never seen 'Seinfeld', never seen 'The Cosby Show' I just don't watch it. I saw half of 'Oprah' one time. I'd rather read.
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.
August Wilson
Your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel.
August Wilson
