Anna Deavere Smith Quotations

I am interested in personal stories because that's when people become expressive, spontaneous and heartfelt.

Learning is a tunnel experience that makes us think more broadly.

Well, the terrible thing right now, and I don't know the statistics, but there's a growing concern in some communities about how rapidly people are sent from school to jail, how quickly they're put into the criminal justice system. And of course the rapidly growing number of brown people, both men and women, in prison. And this is terrible.

I am lucky: I have fantastic doctors and a fantastic dentist.

My work is about giving voice to the unheard, and reiterating the voice of the heard in such a way that you question, or re-examine, what is the truth.

President Obama called for a 'we' nation in his Inauguration Address. Art convenes. It is not just inspirational. It is aspirational. It pricks the walls of our compartmentalized minds, opens our hearts and makes us brave. And that's what we need most in our country today.

Listening is not just hearing what someone tells you word for word. You have to listen with a heart. I don't want that to sound touchy-feely; it is not. It is very hard work.

You know, real artists, we expose our flaws. We long for intimacy.

I think we need leadership that helps us remember that part of what we are about is caring about more than the person right next to us, but the folks across the way.

You know if we were to look back and how we were in 1955 living in Jim Crow, living in segregation, living in segregated schools, its hard to believe that it was America, but it really was.

Racism has been for everyone like a horrible, tragic car crash, and we've all been heavily sedated from it. If we don't come into consciousness of this tragedy, there's going to be a violent awakening we don't want. The question is, can we wake up?

I'm interested when things are upside down - because there are so many possibilities in that one moment. There is a lot that is exposed.

Many people are afraid to talk about race because it's so emotionally loaded. We don't have the vocabulary to talk about it. Every day, our vocabulary seems more and more inadequate.

The American idea is as promising, imaginative, and full of the unexpected as the land itself. The land represents freedom - the frontier, the ability to make a new future with your own bare hands.

My main concern is theater, and theater does not reflect or mirror society. It has been stingy and selfish, and it has to do better.

I mean, I think that - as an actress, in particular, I'm basically a fool, and I see the world upside down.

I think as a kid I always liked to listen to people. I loved hearing stories.

People in power have to be careful about what comes out of their mouth. They have to find exactly the right word that can't be attacked.

Movies, as evidenced by a chorus of protesting and celebrating Americans, influence broader trends.

I was a mimic when I was a child. I mimicked the teacher and made friends that way, actually. That was a very subversive activity, because I was a goody-goody who never got in trouble. But if I went off in the corner and mimicked the teacher, people loved it.

Somehow we can't live outside the politics of race. There's something very deep in all of us, that is taught to us when we are very, very little. Which is the disrespect and fear of the other.

We owe the government taxes. We owe our creditors interest. What do these powers owe us?

I remember from my father's funeral that the minister kept using a metaphor about life of a prism. And I took that away like a cherished image.

I don't talk a lot when I interview. My job is to get out of the way.

I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment.

I mean, I think a healthy country is a country where people are healthy physically, and a smart country is a country where people are educated.

I never know when somebody's going to knock on the door of my own unconscious in a way that I wouldn't have anticipated.

There's not a lot of flash about me.

To live your life well, and have respect for what came before or after - there's a strong respect for that in African culture.

You hang around actors, or dancers, the minute you sneeze, everybody has a remedy, and we're all on a million different kinds of diets, and different kinds of things that we do for exercise.

Making your life is ultimately an extraordinarily creative endeavor.

People who are sick, or who have been sick, or have come close to death have a lot to say - and they want you to hear it.

When you think about it, words can break your heart, or they can change your day.

When I got out of acting school, I was lucky to have gotten any job at all. A lot of people hiring African American actresses - it was right after 'Roots,' and for society, not me, it was great. Nice richly dark-skinned people was the fashion, and I was not.

Because of the generation in which I came into the world, there were expectations. Of course there were expectations. It was something having to do with being a respectable Negro woman who would make the people in Baltimore proud.

I made a real specific decision when I came out of school and most artists were writing about home - if you were a woman, you were writing about being a woman - and I decided not to do that, write about what you know. That's not what I do. I went as far away from home as possible in terms of the development of my imagination.

I talk about race a lot. It's been my work ever since I came out of acting school. But it's true that in a way talking about race is a taboo. Because so many of our debates about race have to do not with race but with what we are willing to see, what we will not see and what we don't want to see.

What my work is, is my approach to it. It's the practice. And my work is about the effort that I make to get there. And I think if there's anything artistic, it's in that middle space.

Artists are the people that no matter what, pick up the pen, pick up a paintbrush. They take the time to translate what is happening to create something that resonates deeply with the rest of the people that are caught in the middle of their own reality.

You know, all kinds of people inspire me.

If I do three interviews in a day, I can be exhausted, because the process of hearing everyone requires that I empty out myself. While I'm listening, my own judgments and prejudices certainly come up. But I know I won't get anything unless I get those things out of the way.

A lot of acting techniques are very self-oriented.

For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas.

I call the language of political figures, pundits and administrators 'the haute couture of language.'

I have a lot of optimism about new doctors because I think it's really clear that it's a lot of hard work and no guarantee of a lot of money.

I have never been in a violent movie or television show.

I love studying how people are. Not just what they're saying, but how they are, what they're doing.

I see myself as not a typical theater person, but a person who uses the theater as a place to meet people and explore ideas.

I see myself first and foremost as a student of expression.

I think some of our most talented people are not going to pick the arts as a way that they're going to spend their lives.

I think that art is supposed to be ahead of the times.

I would love to have been a documentary filmmaker; I just didn't have the resources to do that.

If you think about what acting is supposed to be, my job is to disappear.

In my own life I'm frequently in predominantly white atmospheres.

In my profession, I'm around a lot of people whose bodies are their instruments in one way or another.

Not that many people, even contemporary writers, write about right now.

Over time, my students have gotten richer and more educated.

Probably the person who said the only color in Los Angeles is green was right.

Suddenly in high school, I'm in a predominantly Jewish atmosphere. Jewish people were my gate to white America.

That artists are called to be more responsible and 'true' is a tip of hat to their power.

You know, interesting minds usually do hold more than one idea at a time.

I think it's really important to give yourself a very big question that you're working on that you can come home to

We would like doctors to listen, but the fact is, we better be ready to be able to talk to them. You're going to have to be an active participant in that conversation, so I'd say the American people are going to need ways of stepping up to the conversation.

I think a lot of L.A. is something like USC - this incredible white culture living in the midst of color, and no obvious reaction to it at all. I mean, they have guards at the gate at USC - guards at the gate of a major university! And the guards chase young black boys away - I've seen it, chasing 8-year-old boys.

People realize that we're very good at sending people to war, but we're not good at taking care of them. And people are coming back from war now; years ago, they would have been killed, now they're wounded; and they're coming back alive and with post-traumatic stress. So, I think Americans are sensible enough to know we've got to figure out a way to take care of them.

I think we can learn a lot about a person in the very moment that language fails them. In the very moment they they have to be more creative than they would have imagined in order to communicate. It's the very moment that they have to dig deeper than the surface to find words, and at the same time, it's a moment when they want to communicate very badly. They're digging deep and projecting out at the same time.

Confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition.

I am not myself; I am the potential of myself.

Discipline — both mental and physical — is crucial.

Art simply can’t be stopped.

Identity is an assemblage of constellations.

If you say a word often enough it becomes you.

Use your time to bathe yourself in the gift. Move your hand across the canvas. Go to museums. Make this into an obsession.

I went as far away from home as possible in terms of the development of my imagination.

Each person has a literature inside them. But when people lose language, when they have to experiment with putting their thoughts together on the spot-that's what I love most. That's where character lives.

Do you want to be an artist so that the whole world will look at you, or do you want to be an artist because you would like to use your ability to attract attention, to have the world see itself through you differently?

Art should take what is complex and render it simply. It takes a lot of skill, human understanding, stamina, courage, energy, and heart to do that.

Perhaps art is a quest for the perfect, or even the imperfect. Reality always falls short on both sides.

Those in the margins are always trying to get to the center, and those at the center, frequently in the name of tradition, are trying to keep the margins at a distance.

My job in my work is not to acquire power; it's to question power.

Hope is when you look out the window and you go, 'It doesn't look good at all, but I'm going to go beyond what I see to give people visions of what could be.'

Commit to finding the true nature of art. Go for that thing no one can teach you.

Your desire to communicate must be bigger than your relationship with the chaotic and unfair realities.

Some people study a text very deeply. The people are my text. I study their words and what their words sound like, over and over again.

You are an explorer. You understand that every time you go into the studio, you are after something that does not yet exist.

Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.

Poverty makes it very difficult in an already competitive world for kids to get on a straight track where they can actually love learning.

Then everyone leaves, and you are left, each night, to your own devices with a crowd of interesting people - most of whom you don't know - sitting in the dark.

The individuals inside are frequently fighting that their individual voices be heard, while the walls of the place, which are the mask, and the perception, are reluctant to give over to the voices of the individuals. Those in the margins are always trying to get to the center, and those at the center, frequently in the name of tradition, are trying to keep the margins at a distance. Part of the identity of a place is the tension between those in the margins, and those in the center, and they all live behind the walls which wear the tradition.

Even jealousy is based on fantasies: a fantasy that someone else has what belongs to you.

I happen to be a hopeaholic. I tend to look at problems as an opportunity to do some work.

Self-esteem does not come from surrounding yourself with people and things that seem to increase your value. Real self-esteem is an integration of an inner-value with things in the world around you.

Be more than ready. Be present in your discipline. Remember your gift. Be grateful for your gift and treat it like a gift. Cherish it, take care of it, and pass it on.

I think what I am is a "convener"; I like to convene people around ideas.

They say that art should stand the test of time. Life lasts a limited amount of time. Mountains and trees and earth will outlive human beings, but we don't know if they will be here always. Art does outlast the life span of its maker. Art should communicate to an increasing circle of strangers-people who do not know the artist, but come to know the work, and through the work, come to know something about the humanity of the artist that rings with their own humanity.

You can't teach talent. You can't teach inspiration. You can teach people critical facilities. You can give them techniques. You can teach discipline. And you can teach them about the business.

When I was a kid, my grandfather said that "if you say a word often enough, it becomes you." Thinking of that later in life gave me this idea that I could try to become America by learning the words of people from many aspects of the country.

Each person has a literature inside them.

We spend so much time bantering about the words when the real open conversations might very well be our actions. I worry about our rhetoric.

Confidence is a static state. Determination is active. Determination allows for doubt and for humility - both of which are critical in the world today. There is so much that we don’t know, and so much that we know we don’t know. To be overly confident or without doubt seems silly to me. Determination, on the other hand, is a commitment to win, a commitment to fight the good fight.