August Wilson Quotes

The idea of 'talking white,' a lot of people grew up around that, just the idea that if you speak with proper diction and come off as educated that it's not black and that it's actually anti-black and should be considered only something that white people would do.

I think, something that you might be able to locate in the work that I'm creating today: the ability to look at a black America as something that not only can be mined in a very sort of cynical, cold way, but also embraced in a very personal, love-driven way; but also sort of critiqued.

Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law.

You never want to be the whitest-sounding black guy in a room.

You're not from Puerto Rico, so you should say Puerto Rico like all the other people from the place that you come from.

I wanted to have a book that showed there's no one way to sound black. I wanted to tell teens that the way you speak is okay; you're good the way you are.

The way black people feel, especially, is if you're going to tell a black story, let it come from a real place.

What I mean by being real is just when you are doing dance celebrations, sports celebrations, like the cooking dance or anything like that. When you're an artist, you want to always try your best to do the homework and see where it originated from.

Guess what, Beyonce? White people like your music, too. White people buy your songs on iTunes, memorize your lyrics, and admire your talent and beauty. Little white girls wanna be like you just as little black girls do, but instead of that, you'd rather perpetuate the great battle of the races.

I have not seen 'The Lion King.' I don't do black folklore. And I'm black.

Rap was started by black people and, thus, is at the foundation of black culture. So people cannot always wrap their minds around someone like me being inspired by it. But if you listen to the things we're saying, they're authentically us.

When I was young we weren't even allowed to speak our own languages in school. They called it 'vernacular,' as if only English was the real tongue.

I'm not a Rachel Dolezal. I don't fake tan; I don't have the cornrows, I don't misappropriate. I just want to be Beyonce.

A lot of people said I tried to speak white on the phone. That is farthest thing from the truth and offensive.

My paintings are very much about the consumption and production of blackness. And how blackness is marketed to the world.

I've always been told I sound black.

I just feel in a lot of ways black people are so much looser and cooler. Just as a culture, it's so much more real.

Black Poetry is not for Black People...it is for everybody

I'm admitting that I don't know that to be true, but it does sound pretty good. So a big part of my childhood was affecting black culture and black accents and black music and anything black I was into.

I come in with this rock 'n' roll-oriented music, and it's not black enough . . . I've always had to deal with this black-white thing.

The sight of a Black nun strikes their sentimentality; and, as I am unalterably rooted in native ground, they consider me a work of primitive art, housed in a magical color; the incarnation of civilized, anti-heathenism, and the fruit of a triumphing idea.

Her voice was slightly accented but her French was perfect. Someone who'd not just learned the language but loved it. And it showed with every syllable. Gamache knew it was impossible to split language from culture. That without one the other withered. To love the language was to respect the culture.

One of the reasons that the African American actors wanted to be a part of the show was because these people are talking to each other the way that African American people talk to each other, and they said that they didn't see that on TV.

In some way they are all self-portraits, but I think I know what you mean by asking this - I would say, it is too idealistic to paint yourself.

This album is my life, and my life's really not that interesting. It's not "not interesting," but I'm just some dude just like everyone else. But by recording it in an album format, it becomes a product. That's the idea of Built on Glass; it's the relationship between my personal life and the music I make.