August Wilson

Playwright, Screenwriter

August Wilson was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright known for his powerful exploration of African American life through his ten-play cycle, 'The Pittsburgh Cycle.'

Born
April 27, 1945
Quotes
67
Rank
#4250

Quote collection

August Wilson quotes (page 3 of 4)

67 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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"We were land-based agrarian people from Africa. We were uprooted from Africa, and we spent 200 years developing our culture as black Americans. And then we left the South. We uprooted ourselves and attempted to transplant this culture to the pavements of the industrialized North. And it was a transplant that did not take. I think if we had stayed in the South, we would have been a stronger people. And because the connection between the South of the 20's, 30's and 40's has been broken, it's very difficult to understand who we are."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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"Death ain't nothing but a fastball on the outside corner."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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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."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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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."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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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."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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"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."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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"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."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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"There's no idea in the world that is not contained by black life. I could write forever about the black experience in America."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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"The director works as an interpretive artist, but he's still an artist, so you also have to give him room to create and to put his vision of the play or his translation or interpretation of the material on the stage."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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"I been with strangers all day and they treated me like family. I come in here to family and you treat me like a stranger."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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"A novelist writes a novel, and people read it. But reading is a solitary act. While it may elicit a varied and personal response, the communal nature of the audience is like having five hundred people read your novel and respond to it at the same time. I find that thrilling."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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"I found out life's hard but it ain't impossible."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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"Land [is] the only thing God ain't making no more of."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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"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."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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"All you need is the blues. To me, the blues is the book, it's the bible, it's everything."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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"If you want to support a writer, produce the first five plays he writes."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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"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."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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"You got to take the crookeds with the straights. That's what Papa used to say."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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"The blues are important primarily because they contain the cultural expression and the cultural response to blacks in America and to the situation that they find themselves in. And contained in the blues is a philosophical system at work. And as part of the oral tradition, this is a way of passing along information."

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August Wilson Playwright, Screenwriter
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"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."

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