A Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts, and can write what I please. I see no reason why I should not have the same thought, the same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write, whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for this infirm faith, this will not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! I am God in nature; I am a weed by the wall.
I began to write when I was seven, and I have been writing off and on ever since. It is still off and on. You can say that when I am on, when I know I have a book which I am going to write, then I write two thousand words a day. That's so many pages longhand.
I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don't know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying - please let me live until I am finished.
He who knows his soul knows this truth: " I am beyond everything finite; I I now see that the Spirit, alone in a space with Its ever-new joy, has expressed Itself as the vast body of nature. I am the stars, I am the waves, I am the Life of all, I am the laughter within all hearts, I am the smile on the faces of the flowers and in each soul. I am the Wisdom and Power that sustain all creation. "
See that I am God. See that I am in everything. See that I do everything. See that I have never stopped ordering my works, nor ever shall, eternally. See that I lead everything on to the conclusion I ordained for it before time began, by the same power, wisdom and love with which I made it. How can anything be amiss?
When I am at peace with myself . . . then thoughts flow into me most easily and at their best. Where they come from and how - that I cannot say . . . I'd be willing to work forever and forever if I were permitted to write only such music as I want to write and can write - which I myself think good.
I saw myself. . . in the time I watched, I saw strength and frailty, pride and vanity, courage and fear. Of wisdom, a little. Of folly much. Of intentions many good ones; but many more left undone. On this alas, I saw myself a man like any other. But this too I saw . . . Alike as men may seem, each is different as flakes of snow, no two the same.You told me you had no need to seek the Mirror, knowing you were Annlaw Clay-Shaper. Now I know who I am: myself and none other. I am Taran.
I am responsible for what I see. I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt. I could see peace instead of THIS. The past is over it can touch me not. This instant is the only time there is. Today I will judge nothing that occurs. I am not the victim of the world I see. I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts. I am determined to see things differently. I am never upset for the reason I think. Forgiveness is the key to happiness. All that I give I give to myself.
I am motivated to write because it is what I am meant to do. It is not a choice - it is what I am. I did not choose writing - it chose me. And I believe it is necessarily that way. Anyone doing this for some other reason should not be.
I am not perfect." It came out in a rush of breath. "See I thought I was. Thank God I ain't. See a perfect thing ain't got a chance. The world kills it, everything perfect. (Listen to him!) Now see a thing that ain't perfect, it grows like a weed. Yeah, like a weed! A thing that ain't perfect gets hand clapping, smiles, takes the wire an easy winner. But the world ain't set up right if you perfect. You lible to run right into a brick wall. Looks like suicide. All the weeds say, looka there, it suicide!
And when I look at a history book and think of the imaginative effort it has taken to squeeze this oozing world between two boards and typeset, I am astonished. Perhaps the event has an unassailable truth. God saw it. God knows. But I am not God. And so when someone tells me what they heard or saw, I believe them, and I believe their friend who also saw, but not in the same way, and I can put these accounts together and I will not have a seamless wonder but a sandwich laced with mustard of my own.
Sometimes, so much of the difficulty is the question of 'What am I going to write about?' because the world is so vast.
When I started writing full time I had not long stopped being a teacher and when at last I had a full day to write, I would put music on and wonder to myself - am I allowed to do this? Then I thought: 'I am control of this and no one is telling me what I can do.'
I think, for me, there's The Book I Should Write and The Book I Wanted to Write - and they weren't the same book. The Book I Should Write should be realistic, since I studied English Lit. It should be cultural. It should reflect where I am today. The Book I Wanted to Write would probably include flying women, magic, and all of that.
The secret to writing is just to write. Write every day. Never stop writing. Write on every surface you see; write on people on the street. When the cops come to arrest you, write on the cops. Write on the police car. Write on the judge. I'm in jail forever now, and the prison cell walls are completely covered with my writing, and I keep writing on the writing I wrote. That's my method.
There's no reason why you can't say "August Wilson, playwright" even though all of my work, every single play, is about black Americans, about black American culture, about the black experience in America. I write about the black experience of men, or I write about black folks. That's who I am. In the same manner that Chekhov wrote about the Russians, I write about blacks. I couldn't do anything else. I wouldn't do anything else.
I am not a political writer. I agree with Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell, who are social writers. I can't write in that fashion. I am not good enough for that. What I am interested in is family dramas and why we are doing bad things to each other and what our motives are.
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