Anna Deavere Smith Quotes

What you are will show, ultimately. Start now, every day, becoming, in your actions, your regular actions, what you would like to become in the bigger scheme of things.

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.

Identity is an assemblage of constellations.

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.

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.

Each person has a literature inside them.

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.'

Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.

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.

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.

You've heard that old expression from Shakespeare, 'Just speak the speech'? The words themselves will take you to the reality of the character. And so this led me to interview people.

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, it's hard to believe that it was America, but it really was.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

A lot of acting techniques are very self-oriented.