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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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.…

— Anna Deavere Smith

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

— Anna Deavere Smith

I made a real specific decision when I came out of school and most artists were writing about home - if you…

— Anna Deavere Smith

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

— Anna Deavere Smith

Each person has a literature inside them. But when people lose language, when they have to experiment with putting their thoughts together…

— Anna Deavere Smith

There's not a lot of flash about me.

— Anna Deavere Smith

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

— Anna Deavere Smith

When I was a kid, my grandfather said that "if you say a word often enough, it becomes you." Thinking of that…

— Anna Deavere Smith

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

— Anna Deavere Smith

Confidence is a static state. Determination is active. Determination allows for doubt and for humility - both of which are critical in…

— Anna Deavere Smith

Confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition.

— Anna Deavere Smith

I write plays about big, intense subjects.

— Anna Deavere Smith

Because of the generation in which I came into the world, there were expectations. Of course there were expectations. It was something…

— Anna Deavere Smith

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

— Anna Deavere Smith