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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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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
Fully
Ways
Living
Art
Way
Life
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More quotes by 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
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Death ain't nothing but a fastball on the outside corner.
August Wilson
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You are responsible for the world that you live in.
August Wilson
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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
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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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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
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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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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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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
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Have a belief in yourself that is bigger than anyone's disbelief.
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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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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You are responsible for the world that you live in. It is not government's responsibility. It is not your school's or your social club's or your church's or your neighbor's or your fellow citizen's. It is yours, utterly and singularly yours.
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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I dont write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but thats not why I write.
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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My influences have been what I call my four Bs - the primary one being the blues, then Borges, Baraka, and Bearden.
August Wilson
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I don't write for a particular audience.
August Wilson
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Suffice it to say, I'm not poor.
August Wilson
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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