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" As soon as white folks say a play's good, the theater is jammed with blacks and whites. "
August Wilson
White
Play
Say
Related Quotes:
" I don't write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but that's not why I write. "
August Wilson
Why
Writing
I Believe
" I just write stuff down and pile it up, and when I get enough stuff, I spread it out and look at it and figure out how to use it. "
August Wilson
Look
Write
Up
" Blacks in America want to forget about slavery - the stigma, the shame. If you can't be who you are, who can you be? How can you know what to do? We have our history. We have our book, and that is the blues. "
August Wilson
Slavery
Book
History
" Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. "
August Wilson
Work
Demons
Forgiveness
" 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. "
August Wilson
Jazz
Attitude
Trouble
" I write for myself, and my goal is bringing that world and that experience of black Americans to life on the stage and giving it a space there. "
August Wilson
Myself
World
Space
" I think all in all, one thing a lot of plays seem to be saying is that we need to, as black Americans, to make a connection with our past in order to determine the kind of future we're going to have. In other words, we simply need to know who we are in relation to our historical presence in America. "
August Wilson
America
Future
Past
" Suffice it to say, I'm not poor. "
August Wilson
Poor
Say
Suffice
" I think it was the ability of the theater to communicate ideas and extol virtues that drew me to it. And also, I was, and remain, fascinated by the idea of an audience as a community of people who gather willingly to bear witness. "
August Wilson
People
Community
Me
" 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. "
August Wilson
Hand
You
Need
" Keep your hands moving. Writing is rewriting. "
August Wilson
Hands
Your
Writing
" I think of dying every day... At a certain age, you should be prepared to go at any time. "
August Wilson
You
Age
Day
" For me, the original play becomes an historical document: This is where I was when I wrote it, and I have to move on now to something else. "
August Wilson
Me
Move On
Move
" 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. "
August Wilson
Find
Time
Reading
" 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. "
August Wilson
Find
Relationship
Want
" I write the black experience in America, and contained within that experience, because it is a human experience, are all the universalities. "
August Wilson
Black
Write
America
" I first got involved in theater in 1968, at the height of a social tumult. I was a poet. "
August Wilson
Got
First
Poet
" 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. "
August Wilson
Find
Week
You
" 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. "
August Wilson
Morning
Book
Life
" Blacks have traditionally had to operate in a situation where whites have set themselves up as the custodians of the black experience. "
August Wilson
Where
Up
Situation
" Scripts were rather scarce in 1968. We did a lot of Amiri Baraka's plays, the agitprop stuff he was writing. It was at a time when black student organizations were active on the campuses, so we were invited to the colleges around Pittsburgh and Ohio, and even as far away as Jackson, Mississippi. "
August Wilson
Student
Time
Far Away
" How do we transform loss? ... Time's healing balm is essentially a hoax. "
August Wilson
How
Time
Healing
" I work as an artist, and I think the audience of one, which is the self, and I have to satisfy myself as an artist. So I always say that I write for the same people that Picasso painted for. I think he painted for himself. "
August Wilson
Self
Think
Say
" All art is political in the sense that it serves someone's politics. "
August Wilson
Political
Someone
Art