I dont write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but thats not why I write.

Your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel.

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.

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.

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.

For me, the original play becomes an historical document: This is where I was when I wrote it, and I have to move on now to something else.

The details of our struggle to survive and prosper, in what has been a difficult and sometimes bitter relationship with a system of laws and practices that deny us access to the tools necessary for productive and industrious life, are available to any serious student of history or sociology.