You got to take the crookeds with the straights.
If the train stays on the track ... it's going to get where it's going.
AUGUST WILSON, The Piano Lesson
When I first started writing plays I couldn’t write good dialogue because I didn’t respect how black people talked. I thought that in order to make art out of their dialogue I had to change it, make it into something different. Once I learned to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I let them start talking.
AUGUST WILSON, The Paris Review, Winter 1999
I don't go by what the law say. The law's liable to say anything. I go by if it's right or not. It don't matter what the law say. I take and look at it for myself.
AUGUST WILSON, The Piano Lesson
The director works as an interpretive artist, but he's still an artist, so you also have to give him room to create and to put his vision of the play or his translation or interpretation of the material on the stage.
AUGUST WILSON, African American Review, Spring 2001
All art is political in the sense that it serves someone’s politics.
AUGUST WILSON, The Paris Review, Winter 1999
Life don't owe you nothing.
Land [is] the only thing God ain't making no more of.
AUGUST WILSON, The Piano Lesson
I think that as a playwright, if I detail that environment, then I'm taking away something from them [designers]. I'm taking away their creativity and their ability to have input themselves, not just to follow what the playwright has written. So I do a minimum set description and let the designers create within that.
AUGUST WILSON, African American Review, Spring, 2001
Death ain't nothing but a fastball on the outside corner.
|