August Wilson quote: "You look up one day and you hate the whiskey, and you hate the women, and you hate the piano. But that's all you got. You can't do nothing else. All you know how to do is play that piano. Now, who am I? Am I me? Or am I the piano player?"

Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your...
AUGUST WILSON

I write for myself, and my goal is bringing that world and that experience of black Americans to lif...
AUGUST WILSON

I think all in all, one thing a lot of plays seem to be saying is that we need to, as black American...
AUGUST WILSON

I've seen some terrible plays, but I generally enjoy myself. One play I walked out of, I have a ...
AUGUST WILSON

Between speeches and awards, you can find something to do every other week. It's hard to write. ...
AUGUST WILSON

Blacks have traditionally had to operate in a situation where whites have set themselves up as the c...
AUGUST WILSON

Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your...
AUGUST WILSON

Most of black America is in housing projects, without jobs, living on welfare. And this is not the c...
AUGUST WILSON

I don't look at our society today too much. My focus is still in the past, and part of the reaso...
AUGUST WILSON

I'm a De Niro fan. I went eleven years without seeing a movie; the last one before that, Februar...
AUGUST WILSON

I do - very specifically, I remember Bessie Smith; I used to collect 78 records that I would buy fro...
AUGUST WILSON

In 1977, I wrote a series of poems about a character, Black Bart, a former cattle rustler-turned-alc...
AUGUST WILSON

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

Blues is the bedrock of everything I do. All the characters in my plays, their ideas and attitudes, ...
AUGUST WILSON

I been with strangers all day and they treated me like family. I come in here to family and you trea...
AUGUST WILSON

I think it was the ability of the theater to communicate ideas and extol virtues that drew me to it....
AUGUST WILSON

We were what you would call a poor family, but we were rich in so many things. We did family things ...
AUGUST WILSON

I once wrote a short story called 'The Best Blues Singer in the World,' and it went like thi...
AUGUST WILSON

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; maste...
AUGUST WILSON

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

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

Jazz in itself is not struggling. That is, the music itself is not struggling... It's the attitude t...
AUGUST WILSON

Near the turn of the century, the destitute of Europe sprang on the city with tenacious claws and an...
AUGUST WILSON

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

I feel sort of embarrassed I don't go to plays, but I can't keep the characters straight. I feel I s...
AUGUST WILSON

All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand ...
AUGUST WILSON

To my observation, the black middle class has failed to return the expertise and sophistication and ...
AUGUST WILSON

Take jazz or blues; you can't disregard that part of the African-American experience, or even try to...
AUGUST WILSON

When blacks made purchases in any store, they weren't given paper bags; instead, they had to carry o...
AUGUST WILSON

A novelist writes a novel, and people read it. But reading is a solitary act. While it may elicit a ...
AUGUST WILSON

From Romare Bearden I learned that the fullness and richness of everyday life can be rendered withou...
AUGUST WILSON

The way I see it, the stage tells the story for the ear, and the screen for the eye... On stage, you...
AUGUST WILSON

Style ain't nothing but keeping the same idea from beginning to end. Everybody got it.
AUGUST WILSON

I have to confess that I'm not a big movie person. I don't go to a lot of films. And I don't know ve...
AUGUST WILSON

Blacks in America want to forget about slavery -- the stigma, the shame. That's the wrong move. If y...
AUGUST WILSON

All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand a...
AUGUST WILSON

It ain't nothing to find no starting place in the world. You just start from where you find yourself...
AUGUST WILSON

I might be a different kind of fool, but I ain't gonna be the same fool twice.
AUGUST WILSON

We are running out of energy, mental energy, ... We need to generate something new, for ourselves.
AUGUST WILSON

Joe Turner's Come and Gone.
AUGUST WILSON

An August heritage / August Wilson and The Pittsburgh Cycle
AUGUST WILSON

assimilation that black Americans have been rejecting for the past 380 years.
AUGUST WILSON

Gem of the Ocean,
AUGUST WILSON

My plays are talky; I say shut up and listen. They are about black men talking, and in American soci...
AUGUST WILSON

Between speeches and awards, you can find something to do every other week. It's hard to write. Your...
AUGUST WILSON

I need a woman that fits in my hand.
AUGUST WILSON

I don't have a musical background. But I do enjoy all kinds of music. It's an expression of the huma...
AUGUST WILSON

You have to make your own definition of yourself. That's crucial. When I do interviews, I am expecte...
AUGUST WILSON

I still don't know what works until it works, until I see it working. It wasn't through seeing other...
AUGUST WILSON

I first got involved in theater in 1968, at the height of a social tumult. I was a poet.
AUGUST WILSON

I'm trying to take culture and put it onstage, demonstrate it is capable of sustaining you. There is...
AUGUST WILSON

When you look at a fellow, if you taught yourself to look for it, you can see his song written on hi...
AUGUST WILSON

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

I know some things when I start. I know, let's say, that the play is going to be a 1970s or a 1930s ...
AUGUST WILSON

Suffice it to say, I'm not poor.
AUGUST WILSON

I write the black experience in America, and contained within that experience, because it is a human...
AUGUST WILSON

[Wilson may never see the marquee or sit in the theater that carries his name. Last month, in an int...
AUGUST WILSON

Writing has definitely been a refuge for me, something I needed to do in order to survive.
AUGUST WILSON

I feel free, man,
AUGUST WILSON

The fact that he was a self-made man, that he was a lieutenant in the army and became the emperor, I...
AUGUST WILSON

[Reviewing the play's Broadway premiere for The New York Times, Frank Rich wrote that in] Ma Rainey,...
AUGUST WILSON

I think it is an extraordinary honor, and it is truly a capstone of my career. I am overwhelmed.
AUGUST WILSON

I'm glad I finished the cycle [of plays],
AUGUST WILSON

I've lived a blessed life. I'm ready.
AUGUST WILSON

I'm standing! I'm standing! My legs stood up!
AUGUST WILSON

I found out life's hard but it ain't impossible.
AUGUST WILSON

Many is the time I looked at my daddy and seen him staring off at his hands. I got a little older I ...
AUGUST WILSON

it was as far away from New York as I could get.
AUGUST WILSON

[With the cycle done and] Radio Golf ... a war between coffin makers and undertakers, Death taking a...
AUGUST WILSON

He paused. ''But what if they say they're going to cut off the heads of my children? If it's just me...
AUGUST WILSON

The Piano Lesson.
AUGUST WILSON

For me, the original play becomes an historical document: This is where I was when I wrote it, and I...
AUGUST WILSON

There's no idea in the world that is not contained by black life. I could write forever about the bl...
AUGUST WILSON

What comes forth from you as an artist cannot be controlled. But you have responsibilities as a glob...
AUGUST WILSON

I think that if I'm at home sitting doing the rewrite, I'm going to write something different than i...
AUGUST WILSON

You can only close if you opened.
AUGUST WILSON

American society as a whole has a very short memory. There are a lot of things we don't know or have...
AUGUST WILSON

I should take a page from my lawyer-every time I call, he's on vacation, four or five times a year.
AUGUST WILSON

Regardless of the medium, rewriting and more rewriting is still necessary. No one gets anything righ...
AUGUST WILSON

Like most people, I have this sort of love-hate relationship with Pittsburgh. This is my home, and a...
AUGUST WILSON

My first wife is a good woman, I still can't say nothing bad about her other than the fact that ...
AUGUST WILSON

I had always been fascinated with Napoleon because he was a self-made emperor; Victor Hugo said, ...
AUGUST WILSON

Walk in there. Tip my hat. Lay my money down on the table. Get my deed and walk on out. This time I ...
AUGUST WILSON

Don't you try and go through life worrying about if somebody like you or not. You best be making sur...
AUGUST WILSON

I've never seen 'Seinfeld', never seen 'The Cosby Show'; I just don't watch ...
AUGUST WILSON

Keep your hands moving. Writing is rewriting.
AUGUST WILSON

Please, Mr. Engineer let a man ride the line
Please, Mr. Engineer let a man ride the line
...
AUGUST WILSON

In 1980 I sent a play, 'Jitney,' to the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, won a Jerome...
AUGUST WILSON

I haven't read Ibsen, Shaw, Shakespeare - except 'The Merchant of Venice' in ninth grade...
AUGUST WILSON

My hero when I was 14 was Sonny Liston. No matter what kinds of problems you were having with your p...
AUGUST WILSON

Suffice it to say, I'm not poor.
AUGUST WILSON

Jazz in itself is not struggling. That is, the music itself is not struggling... It's the attitu...
AUGUST WILSON

All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one ha...
AUGUST WILSON

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

My plays are ultimately about love, honor, duty, betrayal.
AUGUST WILSON

My influences have been what I call my four Bs - the primary one being the blues, then Borges, Barak...
AUGUST WILSON

I don't write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but that'...
AUGUST WILSON

The blues are important primarily because they contain the cultural expression and the cultural resp...
AUGUST WILSON

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

Anything you want to know, you ask the characters.
AUGUST WILSON

I try to explore, in terms of the life I know best, those things which are common to all cultures.
AUGUST WILSON

You not the only one who's got wants and needs. But I held on to you, Troy. I took all my feelings, ...
AUGUST WILSON

If you load responsibility on a man unworthy of it he will always betray himself.
AUGUST HECKSCHER

I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
AUGUST STRINDBERG

He considers the theatrical version of Fanny and Alexander an amputated version of what his original...
BILLE AUGUST

People who keep dogs are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
AUGUST STRINDBERG

In many organisms, including man, the mechanical respiration and the circulation of the blood are &#...
AUGUST KROGH

I hated her now with a hatred more fatal than indifference because it was the other side of love.
AUGUST STRINDBERG

Happiness consumes itself like a flame. It cannot burn for ever, it must go out, and the presentimen...
AUGUST STRINDBERG

Friendship can only exist between persons with similar interests and points of view. Man and woman b...
AUGUST STRINDBERG

The hood-winked husband shows his anger, and the word jealous is flung in his face. Jealous husband ...
AUGUST STRINDBERG

I love her and she loves me, and we hate each other with a wild hatred born of love
AUGUST STRINDBERG

People who keep dogs are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
AUGUST STRINDBERG

Family... the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage ...
AUGUST STRINDBERG

That is the thankless position of the father in the family-the provider for all, and the enemy of al...
AUGUST STRINDBERG

I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
AUGUST STRINDBERG

People are constantly clamoring for the joy of life. As for me, I find the joy of life in the hard a...
AUGUST STRINDBERG

Society is a madhouse whose wardens are the officials and the police.
AUGUST STRINDBERG

What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even, than what he condemns, of his character, in...
AUGUST HARE

Half the failures in life arise from pulling in one's horse as he is leaping.
AUGUST HARE

Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.
AUGUST HARE

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to hav...
AUGUST HARE

We aim in the domain of politics at republicanism; in the domain of economics at socialism; in the d...
AUGUST BEBEL

Christianity is the enemy of liberty and civilization.
AUGUST BEBEL

Christianity is the enemy of liberty and civilization
AUGUST BEBEL

We aim in the domain of politics at republicanism; in the domain of economics at socialism; in the d...
AUGUST BEBEL

We may fondly imagine that we are impartial seekers after truth, but with a few exceptions, to which...
AUGUST KROGH

We talked a lot about The Best Intentions and how we could shoot certain scenes in different ways wi...
BILLE AUGUST

Why is it so painful to watch a person sink? Because there is something unnatural in it, for nature ...
AUGUST STRINDBERG

She is also brought to a point of zero in the beginning of the story, and I think you can say that a...
BILLE AUGUST

Les Miserables. I never read the book before, but when I read this script it was so outstanding, so ...
BILLE AUGUST

It was actually Peter's idea that I should make the film. He called me in the very beginning, and I ...
BILLE AUGUST

It was a major dream come true at last. In many respects, Jerusalem is a very modern and important s...
BILLE AUGUST

I was mostly interested in it as a theatrical film. Personally, I am not so interested in television...
BILLE AUGUST

I wanted to make Jerusalem as feature film. But we couldn't finance it only through theatrical relea...
BILLE AUGUST

I spent almost 3 months with Bergman, four hours every afternoon. We sat and went through the whole ...
BILLE AUGUST

I like the vulnerability, the naked face. And then, of course, I hadn't done a contemporary story in...
BILLE AUGUST

He considers the theatrical version of Fanny and Alexander an amputated version of what his original...
BILLE AUGUST

From the beginning, we were prepared, we know how we would shoot and cut the two versions.
BILLE AUGUST

I always disliked dogs, those protectors of cowards who lack the courage to fight an assailant thems...
AUGUST STRINDBERG

Tim's characters tend to wear darker colors and some, like the corpse bride, are no longer living, b...
JOHN AUGUST

post-apocalyptic fantasy.
JOHN AUGUST

We wanted to make a version that wasn't so disturbing that you couldn't put it in a family movie,
JOHN AUGUST

On the surface, she appears to be a monster but in fact she is kind and sweet and misunderstood.
JOHN AUGUST

We were not ready to play. The matches we won, everybody contributed and the most we lost everybody ...
DON AUGUST

We challenged New Trier a little bit in the second game. New Trier is just a little better than us r...
DON AUGUST

To their credit they never quit. It was one of those frustrating nights where we kept shooting ourse...
DON AUGUST

We're trying to serve more aggressive. We work very hard on serving every day in practice. If we bac...
DON AUGUST

It's not as if he didn't understand that much of his behavior was driven by desperation and self-hat...
AUGUST KLEINZAHLER

I wanted to make Jerusalem as feature film. But we couldn't finance it only through theatrical r...
BILLE AUGUST

There can be little doubt that fishes swimming rapidly do not make respiratory movements at all, but...
AUGUST KROGH

It is no doubt technically possible to study metabolism and respiration of fishes during swimming at...
AUGUST KROGH

He liked the girls, liked to hold them around the waist, felt like a man when he did. But as for tal...
AUGUST STRINDBERG

I found it possible to observe at least the superficial capillaries of muscles both in the frog and ...
AUGUST KROGH

There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes.
AUGUST STRINDBERG

In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.
AUGUST SANDER

The mob could begin to rule in a few days if these people do not get more food and water. I think it...
AUGUST PILLSBURY

I don't like to call myself a poet, ... Most poets are shiftless, no-account fools.
AUGUST KLEINZAHLER

The New Jersey character - at least this part of Jersey - is straightforward, plainspoken to the poi...
AUGUST KLEINZAHLER

The living generation is bound to support them, as it would an aged and slightly zany parent.
AUGUST HECKSCHER

We always think about the rights of the terrorists. But if there is an attack that you could have pr...
AUGUST HANNING

As new developments they present new dangers.
AUGUST HANNING

I did it again. Lying guilty in a hotel room for a woman I will fail for.
J.M. AUGUST

The most direct evidence of the wonderful plasticity and elasticity of red corpuscles is obtained wh...
AUGUST KROGH

Sorrow has the fortunate peculiarity that it preys upon itself. It dies of starvation. Since it is e...
AUGUST STRINDBERG

Muscles do not use oxygen at a constant rate.
AUGUST KROGH

During my stay in London I resided for a considerable time in Clapham Road in the neighbourhood of C...
AUGUST KEKULé

You have this novel idea of the world, like it’s made up of ladder hunting and test taking and fra...
J.M. AUGUST

Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, and then perhaps we shall learn the truth.
AUGUST KEKULé

The respiratory mechanisms of birds are definitely adapted to the function of flight, as evidenced b...
AUGUST KROGH

That is the thankless position of the father in the family - the provider for all, and the enemy of ...
AUGUST STRINDBERG

The novel is a penetrating study of morals and ethics.
BILLE AUGUST

Doesn't matter how near; Doesn't matter how far; One thing is clear; I love you wherever you are
AUGUST LINDBERG

The circulatory system of man and the vertebrate animals can be considered as made up of a small num...
AUGUST KROGH

I was mostly interested in it as a theatrical film. Personally, I am not so interested in television...
BILLE AUGUST

It was actually Peter's idea that I should make the film. He called me in the very beginning, an...
BILLE AUGUST

The big difference is the size of the crew and the flexibility of shooting because of the size. I me...
BILLE AUGUST

What an occupation! To sit and flay your fellow men and then offer their skins for sale and expect t...
AUGUST STRINDBERG

A man with a so-called character is often a simple piece of mechanism; he has often only one point o...
AUGUST STRINDBERG

I dream, therefore I exist.
AUGUST STRINDBERG

The affinity of blood or pure haemoglobins for oxygen is a complex phenomenon, depending upon a numb...
AUGUST KROGH

In the tissues generally, and in such a cavity as the abdomen, the pressure is everywhere and practi...
AUGUST KROGH

The tremendous honour of the Nobel Prize is of the strongest incentive to me in my work, while the a...
AUGUST KROGH

In many cases of inflammation, the vascular changes develop slowly and long after the application of...
AUGUST KROGH

In the numerous observations made in my laboratory upon this object, we have only once seen a combin...
AUGUST KROGH

Since muscular contractions are usually more or less regularly alternated with relaxations, the syst...
AUGUST KROGH

In man, the mechanical breathing is essential to life, and it is one of the old tests for death to s...
AUGUST KROGH

For a large number of problems, there will be some animal of choice, or a few such animals, on which...
AUGUST KROGH

In the giraffe with a total height of 5 m., the heart is at a height of about 2.5 m., and it would b...
AUGUST KROGH

as soon as a work of art is of practical use, betrays a purpose or a tendency its beauty vanishes.
AUGUST STRINDBERG

Svijet obično ne sudi mladića po duševnih vrlinah, već po školskih svjedodžbah ili kašnje po ...
AUGUST ŠENOA

You do much worse things- you who can see to other planets."- Bertha, "The Father
AUGUST STRINDBERG

For the whole of life consists of nothing but contradictions. The rich are the poor in spirit; the m...
AUGUST STRINDBERG

Society is madhouse whose wardens are the officials and the police
AUGUST STRINDBERG

I believe in music the way some people believe in fairy tales
AUGUST RUSH (AUGUST RUSH 2007 MOVIE)

I've always been able to sense the relationship between two people based on how one person says ...
J. AUGUST RICHARDS

I always say that I'm at my best when there's no example of what the character is supposed t...
J. AUGUST RICHARDS

Oddly enough, I've always really loved Nightcrawler. You know who else they didn't use enoug...
J. AUGUST RICHARDS

The cool thing for me is, I go to a lot of conventions - a lot of science fiction conventions like C...
J. AUGUST RICHARDS

You look up one day and you hate the whiskey, and you hate the women, and you hate the piano. But that's all you got. You can't do nothing else. All you know how to do is play that piano. Now, who am I? Am I me? Or am I the piano player?

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August Wilson

You look up one day and you hate the whiskey, and you hate the women, and you hate the piano. But that's all you got. You can't do nothing else. All you know how to do is play that piano. Now, who am I? Am I me? Or am I the piano player?

August Wilson

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