August Wilson
August Wilson
August Wilsonwas an American playwright whose work included a series of ten plays, The Pittsburgh Cycle, for which he received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama. Each is set in a different decade, depicting the comic and tragic aspects of the African-American experience in the 20th century...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth27 April 1945
CityPittsburgh, PA
CountryUnited States of America
law say-anything matter
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.
thinking people black
I think that's the core of black aesthetics: the ability to improvise. That is what has enabled our [black people's] survival.
belly burst butcher capacity churches city claws dared devoured dream europe funeral hard honest hospitals immigrants itself limited man money near nourished offered sewing shops solid tenacious thousand turn until won
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.
fire hard home particular rehearsal room sitting
I think that if I'm at home sitting doing the rewrite, I'm going to write something different than if I'm there in the rehearsal room doing it. It's kind of hard to explain, but if you're tossed into the fire at any particular moment, then you are going to write something different than you will in another particular moment. And that is from day to day.
confess history
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 very much about the history of stage-to-film adaptations.
enjoy expression human kinds musical spirit
I don't have a musical background. But I do enjoy all kinds of music. It's an expression of the human spirit that illuminates our humanity.
truly
I think it is an extraordinary honor, and it is truly a capstone of my career. I am overwhelmed.
fits woman
I need a woman that fits in my hand.
blessed hand lived throw
It's not like poker: You can't throw your hand in. I've lived a blessed life. I'm ready.
daddy gonna hands looked older seen sitting staring time
Many is the time I looked at my daddy and seen him staring off at his hands. I got a little older I know what he was thinking. He sitting there saying, "I got these big old hands but what I'm gonna do with them?
starting
It ain't nothing to find no starting place in the world. You just start from where you find yourself.
fool fools-and-foolishness gonna might
I might be a different kind of fool, but I ain't gonna be the same fool twice.
august cycle heritage pittsburgh wilson
An August heritage / August Wilson and The Pittsburgh Cycle
control eye looking picture screen stage tells viewer
The way I see it, the stage tells the story for the ear, and the screen for the eye... On stage, you can't really control where the viewer's eye goes; there's a whole stage picture there, and the viewer can be looking anywhere. But with the camera, if you want the viewer to look at something in particular, you can put their eye there.