August Wilson Quotes

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.

If you want to support a writer, produce the first five plays he writes.

I don't write for a particular audience.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I may be personable, but I assure you I am a lion.

All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other.

When the sins of our fathers visit us We do not have to play host. We can banish them with forgiveness As God, in his His Largeness and Laws.

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.