197 Quotes by August Wilson

Like most people, I have this sort of love-hate relationship with Pittsburgh. This is my home, and at times I miss it and find it tremendously exciting, and other times I want to catch the first thing out that has wheels.

The most valuable blacks are those in prison, those who have the warrior spirit, who had a sense of being African. They got for their women and children what they needed when all other avenues were closed to them.

If you want to participate in life, you have to deny your identity.

The exact day I became a poet was April 1, 1965, the day I bought my first typewriter.

I haven't read Ibsen, Shaw, Shakespeare - except 'The Merchant of Venice' in ninth grade. I'm not familiar with 'Death of a Salesman.' I haven't read Tennessee Williams.

I write the black experience in America, and contained within that experience, because it is a human experience, are all the universalities.

Pittsburgh is a very hard city, especially if you're black.

We were what you would call a poor family, but we were rich in so many things. We did family things together. We always had dessert, even if it was just Jell-O. So, I never knew I was poor.

I dropped out of school, but I didn't drop out of life. I would leave the house each morning and go to the main branch of the Carnegie Library in Oakland where they had all the books in the world... I felt suddenly liberated from the constraints of a pre-arranged curriculum that labored through one book in eight months.