I ain't never found no place for me to fit. Seem like all I do is start over. It ain't nothing to find no starting place in the world. You just start from where you find yourself.

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.

For me, the original play becomes an historical document: This is where I was when I wrote it, and I have to move on now to something else.

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

Blacks have traditionally had to operate in a situation where whites have set themselves up as the custodians of the black experience.

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.

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.