197 Quotes by August Wilson

The fact that he was a self-made man, that he was a lieutenant in the army and became the emperor, I liked that,

Walk in there. Tip my hat. Lay my money down on the table. Get my deed and walk on out. This time I get to keep all the cotton. Hire me some men to work it for me. Gin my cotton. Get my seed.

When blacks made purchases in any store, they weren't given paper bags; instead, they had to carry out their purchases without a bag. If my mother had informed us of these things, it might have lessened her authoritarian presence in the world. Or, she might have come home one day to find me with hundreds of paper bags that I might have stolen somewhere.

As soon as white folks say a play’s good, the theater is jammed with blacks and whites.

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.

You jumped but I’m falling too.

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.

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.

You can put law on paper but that don’t make it right.