197 Quotes by August Wilson

I am not a historian. I happen to think that the content of my mother's life - her myths, her superstitions, her prayers, the contents of her pantry, the smell of her kitchen, the song that escaped from her sometimes parched lips, her thoughtful repose and pregnant laughter - are all worthy of art.

I think that's the core of black aesthetics: the ability to improvise. That is what has enabled our [black people's] survival.

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.

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.

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 don't write for a particular audience.

Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.

My greatest influence has been the blues. And that's a literary influence, because I think the blues is the best literature that we as black Americans have.

All of art is a search for ways of being, of living life more fully.