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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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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
Blues
Bible
Everything
Book
Need
Needs

More quotes by August Wilson

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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
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I found out life's hard but it ain't impossible.
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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All art is political in the sense that it serves someone's politics.
August Wilson
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Life don't owe you nothing.
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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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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All of art is a search for ways of being, of living life more fully.
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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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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Have a belief in yourself that is bigger than anyone's disbelief.
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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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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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 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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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 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 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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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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Suffice it to say, I'm not poor.
August Wilson