Quotes by August Wilson

“I been with strangers all day and they treated me like family. I come in here to family and you treat me like a stranger.”

“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.”

“Black Mary: Leroy. And John. And Cujoe. And Sam. And Robert. One after the other they come and they go. You can't hold on to none of them. They slip right through your hands. They use you up and yo...”

“Please, Mr. Engineer let a man ride the linePlease, Mr. Engineer let a man ride the lineI ain't got no ticket please let me ride the blinds”

“You can't visit the sins of the father upon the child.”

“Don't you try and go through life worrying about if somebody like you or not. You best be making sure they doing right by you.”

“My early attempts writing plays, which are very poetic, did not use the language that I work in now. I didn't recognize the poetry in everyday language of black America. I thought I had to change i...”

“Aunt Esther: You think you supposed to know everything. Life is a mystery. Don't you know life is a mystery? I see you still trying to figure it out. It ain't all for you to know. It's all an adven...”

“Sometimes you find bad luck and good luck in the same place.”

“Some people carry their luck with them and people got to find it.”

“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.”

“The blues are important primarily because they contain the cultural expression and the cultural response to blacks in America and to the situation that they find themselves in. And contained in the...”

“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 ...”

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

“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 th...”

“You right! You one hundred percent right! I done spent the last seventeen years worrying about what you got. Now its your turn, see? Ill tell you what to do. You grown . . . we don established that...”

“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.”

“Once I started to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I just let them start talking.”

“Please, Mr. Engineer let a man ride the linePlease, Mr. Engineer let a man ride the lineI ain't got no ticket please let me ride the blinds”

“You can't visit the sins of the father upon the child.”