Your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel.
Interpretation
Embrace your struggles because they can lead to personal growth and creativity.
August Wilson's quote speaks to the transformative power of pain and adversity. It suggests that our challenges, often represented as 'demons,' can inspire us and bring forth our inner strengths, depicted as 'angels.' By using our struggles as motivation, we can create something beautiful or meaningful from the turmoil in our lives.
In practice
During a motivational speech, one could reference this quote to encourage listeners to face their challenges.
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.
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.
I do - very specifically, I remember Bessie Smith; I used to collect 78 records that I would buy from the St Vincent de Paul store at five cents apiece, and I did this indiscriminately. I would just take whatever was there. And I listened to Patti Page and Walter Huston, 'September Song.'
I know some things when I start. I know, let's say, that the play is going to be a 1970s or a 1930s play, and it's going to be about a piano, but that's it. I slowly discover who the characters are as I go along.
When I first started writing plays I couldn't write good dialogue because I didn't respect how black people talked. I thought that in order to make art out of their dialogue I had to change it, make it into something different. Once I learned to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I let them start talking.
My influences have been what I call my four Bs - the primary one being the blues, then Borges, Baraka, and Bearden.
They are all alike you know. They hold their tongues for years and you think you're safe, but when the opportunity comes they remember everything.
I will never say something I don't agree with or believe in... even if the reward is massive!
Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.
However,' said Dumbledore, speaking very slowly and clearly so that none of them could miss a word, 'you will find that I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me. You will also find that help will be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.
The more a man knows, the more willing he is to learn-the less a man knows, the more positive he is that he knows everything.
Lose what? A man only has a soul to be won or lost; apart from his life, he has nothing. Past or future lives do not matter - at the moment you are living this one, and you should do so with silent comprehension, joy and enthusiasm. What you must not lose is your enthusiasm.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.