Close to death Quote by Anna Deavere Smith

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

— Anna Deavere Smith

Identity is an assemblage of constellations.

— Anna Deavere Smith

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

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

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

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

— Anna Deavere Smith

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

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

— Anna Deavere Smith

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

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

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

— Anna Deavere Smith

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