August Wilson Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• 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

  Writing, Artist, Thinking

• What comes forth from you as an artist cannot be controlled. But you have responsibilities as a global citizen. Your history dictates your duty. And by writing about black people, you are not limiting yourself. The experiences of African-Americans are as wide open as God's closet.

  August Wilson

  Writing, Responsibility, Artist

• The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is.

  August Wilson

  Writing, Editing, Eloquent

• 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

  Reading, Writing, People

• 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

  Art, Writing, Character

• . . . what happened, of course, was that I was writing a play set in the 1940's that was supposed to be somehow representative of black American life, and I didn't have any women in there. And I knew that wasn't going to work.

  August Wilson

  Writing, Play, Black

• If you want to support a writer, produce the first five plays he writes.

  August Wilson

  Writing, Play, Support

• There's no reason why you can't say "August Wilson, playwright" even though all of my work, every single play, is about black Americans, about black American culture, about the black experience in America. I write about the black experience of men, or I write about black folks. That's who I am. In the same manner that Chekhov wrote about the Russians, I write about blacks. I couldn't do anything else. I wouldn't do anything else.

  August Wilson

  Writing, Men, Who I Am

• 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

  Writing, Space, Giving

• 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

  Writing, Awards, Focus

• I don't write for a particular audience.

  August Wilson

  Writing, Audience, Particular

• I dont write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but thats not why I write.

  August Wilson

  Believe, Writing, Social

• There's no idea in the world that is not contained by black life. I could write forever about the black experience in America.

  August Wilson

  Writing, Ideas, America

• The impulse to write the poem, that impulse is a great dramatic impulse. But hell, anybody could write a play. I do know this: all writers are not dramatists. You may be a great writer, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're a dramatist. Very few people have done both.

  August Wilson

  Writing, Mean, Play

  Interview with Miles Marshall Lewis, believermag.com. November 1, 2004.

• I'm a black American playwright. I couldn't be anything else. I make my art out of black American culture; they're all cut out of the same cloth. That's who I am; that's who I write about.

  August Wilson

  Art, Writing, Cutting

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