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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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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
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Representatives
Life
American
Crafts
Black
Somehow
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Women
Wasn
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More quotes by August Wilson
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
My influences have been what I call my four Bs - the primary one being the blues, then Borges, Baraka, and Bearden.
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
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
Style ain't nothing but keeping the same idea from beginning to end. Everybody got it.
August Wilson
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
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
All you need is the blues. To me, the blues is the book, it's the bible, it's everything.
August Wilson
I don't write for a particular audience.
August Wilson
What do you do with your legacy, and how do you best put it to use?
August Wilson
You got to be right with yourself before you can be right with anybody else.
August Wilson
I found out life's hard but it ain't impossible.
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
Your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel.
August Wilson
Death ain't nothing but a fastball on the outside corner.
August Wilson
Suffice it to say, I'm not poor.
August Wilson
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
You are responsible for the world that you live in.
August Wilson
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
Have a belief in yourself that is bigger than anyone's disbelief.
August Wilson
