I write for myself and my goal is bringing that world and that experience of black Americans to life on the stage and giving it a space there.

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.

You get to the point where your demons, which are terrifying, get smaller and smaller and you get bigger and bigger.

Have a belief in yourself that is bigger than anyone's disbelief.

There's no idea in the world that is not contained by black life. I could write forever about the black experience in America.

There are always and only two trains running. There is life and there is death. Each of us rides them both. To live life with dignity, to celebrate and accept responsibility for your presence in the world is all that can be asked of anyone.

There's no reason why you can't say "August Wilson, playwright" even though all of my work, every single play, is about black Americans, about black American culture, about the black experience in America. I write about the black experience of men, or I write about black folks. That's who I am. In the same manner that Chekhov wrote about the Russians, I write about blacks. I couldn't do anything else. I wouldn't do anything else.