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. — Anna Deavere Smith Copy Share Image
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… — 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
