More - August Wilson Quotes

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. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.

August Wilson

 Courage

Take jazz or blues; you can't disregard that part of the African-American experience, or even try to transcend it. They are affirmations and celebrations of the value and worth of the African-American spirit. And young people would do well to understand them as the roots of today's rap, rather than some antique to be tossed away.

August Wilson

 

The harder you try to hold onto them, the easier it is for some gal to pull them away.

August Wilson

 

Near the turn of the century, the destitute of Europe sprang on the city with tenacious claws and an honest and solid dream. The city devoured them. They swelled its belly until it burst into a thousand furnaces and sewing machines, a thousand butcher shops and bakers' ovens, a thousand churches and hospitals and funeral parlors and money lenders. The city grew. It nourished itself and offered each man a partnership limited only by his talent, his guile and his willingness and capacity for hard work. For the immigrants of Europe, a dream dared and won true.

August Wilson

 

To my observation, the black middle class has failed to return the expertise and sophistication and resources that they've gained in American society over the past 50 years back to the community,

August Wilson

 Class

It's not like poker: You can't throw your hand in. I've lived a blessed life. I'm ready.

August Wilson

 Life

Black actors are mostly locked out of the house, and there is something dreadfully wrong with that,

August Wilson

 Acting And Actors

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.

August Wilson

 

I feel sort of embarrassed I don't go to plays, but I can't keep the characters straight. I feel I should be somewhere else.

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,

August Wilson

 Army