Anna Deavere Smith Quotes

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

Art requires that you make something else exist that is a representation of what your feeling is, or your idea.

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, our vocabulary seems more and more inadequate.

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 have never been in a violent movie or television show.

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.

He was trying to get me to come inside
and away from the scene,
but I said, "No."
I said, "We have to stay here
and watch
because this is wrong.

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.

Making your life is ultimately an extraordinarily creative endeavor.

President Obama called for a 'we' nation in his Inauguration Address. Art convenes. It is not just inspirational. It is aspirational. It pricks the walls of our compartmentalized minds, opens our hearts and makes us brave. And that's what we need most in our country today.

I made a real specific decision when I came out of school and most artists were writing about home - if you were a woman, you were writing about being a woman - and I decided not to do that, write about what you know. That's not what I do. I went as far away from home as possible in terms of the development of my imagination.

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

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.'

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.

We owe the government taxes. We owe our creditors interest. What do these powers owe us?

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

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 back from war now; years ago, they would have been killed, now they're wounded; and they're coming back alive and with post-traumatic stress. So, I think Americans are sensible enough to know we've got to figure out a way to take care of them.

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.

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

The individuals inside are frequently fighting that their individual voices be heard, while the walls of the place, which are the mask, and the perception, are reluctant to give over to the voices of the individuals. Those in the margins are always trying to get to the center, and those at the center, frequently in the name of tradition, are trying to keep the margins at a distance. Part of the identity of a place is the tension between those in the margins, and those in the center, and they all live behind the walls which wear the tradition.

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 in the corner and mimicked the teacher, people loved it.

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

Confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition.

Racism has been for everyone like a horrible, tragic car crash, and we've all been heavily sedated from it. If we don't come into consciousness of this tragedy, there's going to be a violent awakening we don't want. The question is, can we wake up?

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

Use your time to bathe yourself in the gift. Move your hand across the canvas. Go to museums. Make this into an obsession.

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

They say that art should stand the test of time. Life lasts a limited amount of time. Mountains and trees and earth will outlive human beings, but we don't know if they will be here always. Art does outlast the life span of its maker. Art should communicate to an increasing circle of strangers-people who do not know the artist, but come to know the work, and through the work, come to know something about the humanity of the artist that rings with their own humanity.

Somehow we can't live outside the politics of race. There's something very deep in all of us, that is taught to us when we are very, very little. Which is the disrespect and fear of the other.

If you say a word often enough it becomes you.

I think as a kid I always liked to listen to people. I loved hearing stories.

Identity is an assemblage of constellations.

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

We would like doctors to listen, but the fact is, we better be ready to be able to talk to them. You're going to have to be an active participant in that conversation, so I'd say the American people are going to need ways of stepping up to the conversation.

Do you want to be an artist so that the whole world will look at you, or do you want to be an artist because you would like to use your ability to attract attention, to have the world see itself through you differently?

If I do three interviews in a day, I can be exhausted, because the process of hearing everyone requires that I empty out myself. While I'm listening, my own judgments and prejudices certainly come up. But I know I won't get anything unless I get those things out of the way.

People who are sick, or who have been sick, or have come close to death have a lot to say - and they want you to hear it.

I talk about race a lot. It's been my work ever since I came out of acting school. But it's true that in a way talking about race is a taboo. Because so many of our debates about race have to do not with race but with what we are willing to see, what we will not see and what we don't want to see.

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

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

A lot of acting techniques are very self-oriented.

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.

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.

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

What my work is, is my approach to it. It's the practice. And my work is about the effort that I make to get there. And I think if there's anything artistic, it's in that middle space.

You know, all kinds of people inspire me.

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.

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

The American idea is as promising, imaginative, and full of the unexpected as the land itself. The land represents freedom - the frontier, the ability to make a new future with your own bare hands.

Over time, my students have gotten richer and more educated.

Commit to finding the true nature of art. Go for that thing no one can teach you. Go for that communion, that real communion with your soul, and the discipline of expressing that communion with others. That doesn't come from competition. That comes from being one with what you are doing.

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.

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.

When I was a kid, my grandfather said that "if you say a word often enough, it becomes you." Thinking of that later in life gave me this idea that I could try to become America by learning the words of people from many aspects of the country.

Art simply can't be stopped.

Confidence is a static state. Determination is active. Determination allows for doubt and for humility - both of which are critical in the world today. There is so much that we don't know, and so much that we know we don't know. To be overly confident or without doubt seems silly to me. Determination, on the other hand, is a commitment to win, a commitment to fight the good fight.

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.

In my own life I'm frequently in predominantly white atmospheres.

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

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.