I think the blues is the best literature that we as blacks have created since we've been here. I call it our 'sacred book.' What I've attempted to do is to mine that field, to mine those cultural ideas and attitudes and give them to my characters.
From August Wilson
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.
I haven't read Ibsen, Shaw, Shakespeare - except 'The Merchant of Venice' in ninth grade. I'm not familiar with 'Death of a Salesman.' I haven't read Tennessee Williams.
If you want to participate in life, you have to deny your identity.
I write the black experience in America, and contained within that experience, because it is a human experience, are all the universalities.
Keep your hands moving. Writing is rewriting.
Anything you want to know, you ask the characters.
I try to explore, in terms of the life I know best, those things which are common to all cultures.
I think of dying every day... At a certain age, you should be prepared to go at any time.
How do we transform loss? ... Time's healing balm is essentially a hoax.
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