August Wilson > Quotes

“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.”
― August Wilson

“I been with strangers all day and they treated me like family. I come in here to family and you treat me like a stranger.”
― August Wilson, The Piano Lesson

“You got to be right with yourself before you can be right with anybody else.”
― August Wilson

“Have a belief in yourself that is bigger than anyone's disbelief.”
― August Wilson

“In the valley of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
― August Wilson, Gem of the Ocean

“When the sins of our fathers visit us
We do not have to play host.
We can banish them with forgiveness
As God, in his His Largeness and Laws.”
― August Wilson, Fences

“Don't you think I ever wanted other things? Don't you think I had dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me. Don't you think it ever crossed my mind to want to know other men? That I wanted to lay up somewhere and forget about my responsibilities? That I wanted someone to make me laugh so I could feel good? 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. I planted myself inside you and waited to bloom. And it didn't take me no eighteen years to find out the soil was hard and rocky and it wasn't never gonna bloom.”
― August Wilson, Fences

“I ain't never found no place for me to fit. Seem like all I do is start over. It ain't nothing to find no starting place in the world. You just start from where you find yourself.”
― August Wilson, Joe Turner's Come and Gone

“When your daddy walked through the house he was so big he filled it up. That was my first mistake. Not to make him leave room for me.”
― August Wilson, Fences

“I done learned my mistake and learned to do what's right by it. You still trying to get something for nothing. Life don't owe you nothing. You owe it to yourself.
- Troy -”
― August Wilson, Fences

“Don't you try and go through life worrying about if somebody like you or not. You best be making sure they doing right by you.”
― August Wilson, Fences

“Like you? I go out of here every morning… bust my butt…putting up with them crackers everyday…cause I like you? You about the biggest fool I ever saw. It’s my JOB. It’s my RESPONSIBILITY! You understand that? A man got to take care of his family. You live in my house… sleep on my bed clothes…fill you belly up with my food… cause you my son. You my flesh and blood. Not ‘cause I like you! Cause it’s my duty to take care of you. I OWE a responsibility to you! Let’s get this straight right here… before it go along any further… I ain’t got to like you. Mr. Rand don’t five me money come payday cause he likes me. He gives me cause he OWE me. I done give you everything I had to give you. I gave you your life! Me and your mama worked that out between us. And liking your black ass wasn’t part of the bargain. Don’t try and go through life worrying about if somebody like you or not. You best be making sure they doing right by you. You understand what I’m saying, boy?”

- August Wilson, Fences, 1986.”
― August Wilson, Fences

“ROSE: I been standing with you! I been right here with you, Troy. I got a life, too. I gave eighteen years of my life to stand in the same spot with you. Don't you think I ever wanted other things? Don't you think I had dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me. Don't you think it ever crossed my mind to want to know other men? That I wanted to lay up somewhere and forget about my responsibilities? That I wanted someone to make me laugh so I could feel good? 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. I planted a seed and watched and prayed over it. I planted myself inside you and waited to bloom. And it didn't take me not eighteen years to find out the soil was hard and rocky and it wasn't never gonna bloom. But I held on to you. I held you tighter. You was my husband. I owed you everything I had. Every part of me I could find to give you. And upstairs in that room...with the darkness falling in on me...I gave everything I had to try and erase the doubt that you wasn't the fines man in the world. And wherever you was going...I wanted to be there with you. Cause you was my husband. Cause that's the only way I was gonna survive as your wife. You always taking about what you give...and what you don't have to give. But you take too. You take...and you don't even know nobody's giving!”
― August Wilson, Fences

“I cried a river of tears but he was too heavy to float on them. So I dragged him with me these years across an ocean.”
― August Wilson, Seven Guitars

“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.”
― August Wilson

“Okay, Troy...you're right. I'll take care of your baby for you...cause...like you say...she's innocent...and you can't visit the sins of the father upon the child. A motherless child has got a hard time. From right now...this child got a mother. But you a womanless man.”
― August Wilson, Fences

“CORY: You ain't never gave me nothing! You ain't never done nothing but hold me back. Afraid I was gonna be better than you. All you ever did was try and make me scared of you. I used to tremble every time you called my name. Every time I heard your footsteps in the house. Wondering all the time...what's Papa gonna say if I do this?...What's he gonna say if I do that?...What's Papa gonna say if I turn on the radio? And Mama, too...she tries...but she's scared of you.”
― August Wilson, Fences

“ROSE: I married your daddy and settled down to cooking his super and keeping clean sheets on the bed. When your daddy walked through the house he was so big he filled it up. That was my first mistake. Not to make him leave some room for me. For my part in the matter. But at that time I wanted that. I wanted a house that I could sing in. And that's what your daddy gave me. I didn't know to keep up his strength I had to give up little pieces of mine. I did that. I took on his life as mine and mixed up the pieces so that you couldn't hardly tell which was which anymore. It was my choice. It was my life and I didn't have to live it like that.But that's what life offered me in the way of being a woman and I took it. I grabbed hold of it with both hands.”
― August Wilson, Fences

“Everybody in a hurry to slow down.”
― August Wilson, Radio Golf

“CORY: The whole time I was growing up...living in his house...Papa was like a shadow that followed you everywhere. It weighed on you and sunk into your flesh. It would wrap around you and lay there until you couldn't tell which one was you anymore. That shadow digging in your flesh. Trying to crawl in. Trying to live through you. Everywhere I looked, Troy Maxson was staring back at me...hiding under the bed...in the closet. I'm just saying I've got to find a way to get rid of that shadow, Mama.”
― August Wilson, Fences

“I was born to a time of fire.”
― August Wilson, The Piano Lesson

“ROSE: You can't be nobody but who you are, Cory. That shadow wasn't nothing but you growing into yourself. You either got to grow into it or cut it down to fit you. But that's all you got to make life with. That's all you got to measure yourself against that world out there. Your daddy wanted you to everything he wasn't...and at the same time he tried to make you into everything he was. I don't know if he was right or wrong...but I do know he meant to do more good than he meant to do harm. He wasn't always right. Sometimes when he touched he bruised. And sometimes when he took me in his arms he cut.”
― August Wilson, Fences

“i love music more than food!!!!!!!!!!”
― August Wilson, Radio Golf

“-How long you been with the rail road now?
-Twenty-seven years. Now, I'll tell you something about the railroad. What I done learned after twenty-seven years. See, you got North. You got West. You look over here you got South. Over there you got East. Now, you can start from anywhere. Don't care where you at. You got to go one of the four ways. And which way you decide to go, they got a railroad that will take you there. Now that's something simple. You think anybody would be able to understand that. But you'd be surprised how many people trying to go North get on a train going West. They think train's supposed to go where they going rather than where it's going.”
― August Wilson, The Piano Lesson

“You can't visit the sins of the father upon the child.”
― August Wilson, Fences

“I know I got to eat. But I got to live too.”
― August Wilson, Fences - Screenplay

“Troy: "Then when I saw that gal [Alberta]...she firmed up my backbone. And I got to thinking that if I tried...I just might be able to steal second.”
― August Wilson, Fences

“You can put law on paper but that don't make it right.”
― August Wilson

“Woman . . . I do the best I can do. I come in here every Friday. I carry a sack of potatoes and a bucket of lard. You all line up at the door with your hands out. I give you the lint from my pockets. I give you my sweat and my blood. I ain't got no tears. I done spent them. We go upstairs in that room at night . . . and I fall down on you and try to blast a hole into forever. I get up Monday morning . . . find my lunch on the table. I go out. Make my way. Find my strength to carry me through to the next Friday.”
― August Wilson, Fences

“You trying to tell me a woman can’t be nothing without a man. But you alright, huh? You can just walk out of here without me - without a woman – and still be a man. That’s alright. Ain’t nobody gonna ask you, “Avery, who you got to love you?” That’s alright for you. But everybody gonna be worried about Berniece. “How Berniece gonna take care of herself? How she gonna raise that child without a man? Wonder what she do with herself. How she gonna live like that?” Everybody got all kinds of questions for Berniece. Everybody telling me I can’t be a woman unless I got a man. Well, you tell me, Avery – you know – how much a woman am I?”
― August Wilson, The Piano Lesson