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" How do we transform loss? ... Time's healing balm is essentially a hoax. "

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" 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. "

" Blacks have traditionally had to operate in a situation where whites have set themselves up as the custodians of the black experience. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Keep your hands moving. Writing is rewriting. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" All art is political in the sense that it serves someone's politics. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I don't write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but that's not why I write. "

" 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. "

" I think of dying every day... At a certain age, you should be prepared to go at any time. "

" 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. "

" Suffice it to say, I'm not poor. "

" I had always been fascinated with Napoleon because he was a self-made emperor; Victor Hugo said, 'Napoleon's will to power,' and it was the title of my paper. And I submitted it to my teacher, and he didn't think I had written it. And he wanted me to explain it to him. "