August Wilson Quotes

It's wonderful to be able to sit down and write a play.

I would like to write a play.

I've always known that writing plays is very difficult, because I've written three or four that have never been produced.

I think if you're writing a play, it should be its own end game; you'll never get to do a good one unless you know it's not a blueprint for a film; you're not going to get the action right and the story right.

For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence.

Choosing to write a play is some kind of surrender. I don't make an outline. I sit and work, and suddenly the door opens, and out it comes.

What really happened was one day I decided to write a new kind of play.

I've written a couple screenplays and half-finished plays.

I wish I could remember how to write a play. I can't remember how they happened.

The whole thing about writing a play is that it's all about controlling the flow of information traveling from the stage to the audience. It's a stream of information, but you've got your hand on the tap, and you control in which order the audience receives it and with what emphasis, and how you hold it all together.

For me, playwriting is sharing my experiences, telling my stories.

When I'm editing, I try to bring out some dramatic structure. I think it is about theater in some way; it is a little play.

What happens in a play is determined to a certain extent by what I thought might be interesting to have happen before I invented the characters, before they started taking over what happened, because they are three-dimensional individuals, and I cannot tell them what to do. Once I give them their identity and their nature, they start writing the play.

When you write a play, you make a set of assumptions -- that you have something to say, that you know how to say it, that its worth saying, and that maybe someone will come along for the ride.

I'm a playwright. All I care about is the play being good.

I discover that I am thinking about a play, which is the first awareness I have that a new play is forming. When I'm aware of the play forming in my head, it's already at a certain degree in development.

Playwriting is an oral art; it's not an art of a writer expecting to be read but a writer expecting to be heard.

It's very rare for me to come across a script for NYMF that is truly its own animal. That's really what appealed to me about 'Valueville.' I still have my notes from when I first read it.

Theater, at the end of the day, is about ideas. It's about very large ideas. And if the play is beautifully written or smartly written and has incredible characters you follow on the journey, you take home these larger ideas. Whether it's 'Angels in America' or 'Lucky Guy' or 'Normal Heart,' you follow this moment-to-moment journey as an audience.

I don't find writing for the theater that different from writing a rock song.

It's funny how that comes up, because sometimes I'll write something and I'll think, I don't know if that's a film or a play, and then other things I feel very strongly about them just being plays - they feel very theatrical to me.

Character is plot, plot is character.

The only way I could finish a book and get a plot was just to keep making it longer until something happens.

I realize how much I rely on the actors to really know the lines because I tend to forget what they are exactly, even though I've written them. I don't have them memorized. But when it's going well, there is that point where the actor starts to know more about the character than I do.

You write a hit play the same way you write a flop.