Quote

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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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
Forget
Toss
History
Insist
Struggling
Away
Plays
Music
Jazz
Play
Attitude
Struggle
Trouble

More quotes by August Wilson

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Life don't owe you nothing.
August Wilson
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. . . 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
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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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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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You are responsible for the world that you live in.
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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Your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel.
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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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
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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'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
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Have a belief in yourself that is bigger than anyone's disbelief.
August Wilson
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I don't write for a particular audience.
August Wilson
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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
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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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You got to be right with yourself before you can be right with anybody else.
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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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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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
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Death ain't nothing but a fastball on the outside corner.
August Wilson