Anna Deavere Smith
When I got out of acting school, I was lucky to have gotten any job at all. A lot of people hiring African American actresses - it was right after 'Roots,' and for society, not me, it was great. Nice richly dark-skinned people was the fashion, and I was not.
To live your life well, and have respect for what came before or after - there's a strong respect for that in African culture.
Learning is a tunnel experience that makes us think more broadly.
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.
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.
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.
Probably the person who said the only color in Los Angeles is green was right.
Over time, my students have gotten richer and more educated.
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.
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.
In my own life I'm frequently in predominantly white atmospheres.
There's not a lot of flash about me.
If you think about what acting is supposed to be, my job is to disappear.
A lot of acting techniques are very self-oriented.
I have never been in a violent movie or television show.
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.
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.
What you are will show, ultimately. Start now, every day, becoming, in your actions, your regular actions, what you would like to become in the bigger scheme of things.Collection: Becoming
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.Collection: Determination
I am not myself; I am the potential of myself.Collection: Curiosity
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.'Collection: People
Some people study a text very deeply. The people are my text. I study their words and what their words sound like, over and over again. 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. It doesn't matter how educated they are. By living in the world and living their experiences, they bring extraordinary truths. I try to do those truths justice.Collection: Country
I happen to be a hopeaholic. I tend to look at problems as an opportunity to do some work.Collection: Opportunity
Your desire to communicate must be bigger than your relationship with the chaotic and unfair realities.Collection: Communication
You can't teach talent. You can't teach inspiration. You can teach people critical facilities. You can give them techniques. You can teach discipline. And you can teach them about the business.Collection: Teaching
Be more than ready. Be present in your discipline. Remember your gift. Be grateful for your gift and treat it like a gift. Cherish it, take care of it, and pass it on.Collection: Grateful
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.Collection: Character
Even jealousy is based on fantasies: a fantasy that someone else has what belongs to you.Collection: Fantasy
We spend so much time bantering about the words when the real open conversations might very well be our actions. I worry about our rhetoric.Collection: Real
Then everyone leaves, and you are left, each night, to your own devices with a crowd of interesting people - most of whom you don't know - sitting in the dark.Collection: Dark
Discipline — both mental and physical — is crucial.Collection: Discipline
I think it's really important to give yourself a very big question that you're working on that you can come home to.Collection: Home
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?Collection: Artist
Art should take what is complex and render it simply. It takes a lot of skill, human understanding, stamina, courage, energy, and heart to do that.Collection: Art
Poverty makes it very difficult in an already competitive world for kids to get on a straight track where they can actually love learning.Collection: Kids
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.Collection: Country
I think what I am is a "convener"; I like to convene people around ideas.Collection: Thinking
I went as far away from home as possible in terms of the development of my imagination.Collection: Home
Commit to finding the true nature of art. Go for that thing no one can teach you.Collection: Art
Confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition.Collection: Confidence
Each person has a literature inside them. But when people lose language, when they have to experiment with putting their thoughts together on the spot-that's what I love most. That's where character lives.Collection: Character
My job in my work is not to acquire power; it's to question power.Collection: Jobs
If you say a word often enough it becomes you.Collection: Enough
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.Collection: War
I call the language of political figures, pundits and administrators "the haute couture of language."Collection: Political
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 inner-value with things in the world around you.Collection: Real
I think we can learn a lot about a person in the very moment that language fails them. In the very moment they they have to be more creative than they would have imagined in order to communicate. It's the very moment that they have to dig deeper than the surface to find words, and at the same time, it's a moment when they want to communicate very badly. They're digging deep and projecting out at the same time.Collection: Thinking
Use your time to bathe yourself in the gift. Move your hand across the canvas. Go to museums. Make this into an obsession.Collection: Moving
Some people study a text very deeply. The people are my text. I study their words and what their words sound like, over and over again.Collection: People