Quotes from August Wilson

Eli: Freedom is what you make it. Solly: That's what I'm saying. You got to fight to make it mean something.

Love don't know no age and it don't know no experience.

TOLEDO: Everybody got style. Style ain't nothing but keeping the same idea from beginning to end. Everybody got it.

You should have held me tight. You should have grabbed me and held on.

A nigger that ain't afraid to die is the worse kind of nigger for the white man. He can't hold that power over you. That's what I learned when I killed that cat. I got the power of death too.

Everybody got stones in their passway. You got to step over them or walk around them. You picking them up and carrying them with you. All you got to do is set them down by the side of the road. You ain't got to carry them with you.

Aunt Esther: You think you supposed to know everything. Life is a mystery. Don't you know life is a mystery? I see you still trying to figure it out. It ain't all for you to know. It's all an adventure. That's all life is. But you got to trust that adventure.

My early attempts writing plays, which are very poetic, did not use the language that I work in now. I didn't recognize the poetry in everyday language of black America. I thought I had to change it to create art.

Herald Loomis, you shining! You shining like new money!

Don't you go through life worrying about whether somebody like you or not, you best be making sure that they do right by you.

From the deep and the near South the sons and daughters of newly freed African slaves wander into the city. Isolated, cut off from memory, having forgotten the names of the gods and only guessing at their faces, they arrive dazed and stunned, their heart kicking in their chest with a song worth singing.

Foreigners in a strange land, they carry as part and parcel of their baggage a long line of separation and dispersement which informs their sensibilities and marks their conduct as they search for ways to reconnect, to reassemble, to give clear and luminous meaning to the song which is both a wail and a whelp of joy.

Why God got to be so big? Why he got to be bigger than me?

I been wading in the water. I been walking all over the River Jordan. But what it get me, huh? I done been baptized with blood of the lamb and the fire of the Holy Ghost. But what I got, huh? My enemies all around me picking the flesh from my bones. I'm chocking on my own blood and all you got to give me is salvation?

I seen a man grab hold to a fellow and cut off his arm. Cut it off at the shoulder. He had to work at it a while...but he cut it clean off. The man looked down saw his arm gone and started crying. After that he more dangerous with that one arm than the other man is with two. He got less to lose. There's a lot of one-arm men walking around.

I give you sugar for sugar And salt for salt If you can't get along with me It's your own damn fault.

Some people carry their luck with them and people got to find it.

You not the only one who's got wants and needs. But I held on to you, Troy. I took all my feelings, w=my wants and needs, my dreams... and I buried them inside you....Cause you was my husband.

Go in prayer.

You not the only one who's got wants and needs. But I held on to you, Troy. I took all my feelings, my wants and needs, my dreams... and I buried them inside you....Cause you was my husband.

He living too far in the past.

Aunt Ester: He didn't care if anybody else knew if he did or not. He knew. He didn't do it for the people standing around watching. He did it for himself. He say I'd rather die in truth than to live a lie. That way he can say that his life is worth more than a bucket of nails. What is your life worth, Mr. Citizen? That what you got to find out. You got to find a way to live in truth. If you live right you die right.

I hope this leads you to where you're going.

God say different things. Say, "I will smite my enemies." Then he tell you to, "Turn the other cheek." That don't get you nothing but two broke jaws.