August Wilson

My plays are ultimately about love, honor, duty, betrayal. ”

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

I write the black experience in America, and contained within that experience, because it is a human experience, are all the universalities. ”

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. ”

Blacks have traditionally had to operate in a situation where whites have set themselves up as the custodians of the black experience. ”

I dropped out of school, but I didn't drop out of life. I would leave the house each morning and go to the main branch of the Carnegie Library in Oakland where they had all the books in the world... I felt suddenly liberated from the constraints of a pre-arranged curriculum that labored through one book in eight months. ”

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

If you want to participate in life, you have to deny your identity. ”

From Romare Bearden I learned that the fullness and richness of everyday life can be rendered without compromise or sentimentality. ”

My influences have been what I call my four Bs - the primary one being the blues, then Borges, Baraka, and Bearden. ”