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 -… — Anna Deavere Smith Copy Share Image
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. — Anna Deavere Smith Copy Share Image
I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment. — Anna Deavere Smith Copy Share Image
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… — Anna Deavere Smith Copy Share Image
I mean, I think that - as an actress, in particular, I'm basically a fool, and I see the world upside down. — Anna Deavere Smith Copy Share Image
The American idea is as promising, imaginative, and full of the unexpected as the land itself. The land represents freedom - the frontier, the… — Anna Deavere Smith Copy Share Image
Poverty makes it very difficult in an already competitive world for kids to get on a straight track where they can actually love learning. — Anna Deavere Smith Copy Share Image
Your desire to communicate must be bigger than your relationship with the chaotic and unfair realities. — Anna Deavere Smith Copy Share Image
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… — Anna Deavere Smith Copy Share Image
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… — Anna Deavere Smith Copy Share Image
I love studying how people are. Not just what they're saying, but how they are, what they're doing. — Anna Deavere Smith Copy Share Image
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,… — Anna Deavere Smith Copy Share Image
