Anna Deavere Smith Quotes
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You know, all kinds of people inspire me.
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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.
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I write plays about big, intense subjects.
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I mean, I think a healthy country is a country where people are healthy physically, and a smart country is a country where people are educated.
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Each person has a literature inside them.
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To live your life well, and have respect for what came before or after - there's a strong respect for that in African culture.
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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.
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In my profession, I'm around a lot of people whose bodies are their instruments in one way or another.
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You know, interesting minds usually do hold more than one idea at a time.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Suddenly in high school, I'm in a predominantly Jewish atmosphere. Jewish people were my gate to white America.
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For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas.
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A lot of acting techniques are very self-oriented.
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I think it's really important to give yourself a very big question that you're working on that you can come home to, even if you, you know, are going to have to go without a cup of coffee or even a meal, that that should nourish you.
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I have never been in a violent movie or television show.
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I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment.
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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.
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My main concern is theater, and theater does not reflect or mirror society. It has been stingy and selfish, and it has to do better.
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I think that art is supposed to be ahead of the times.
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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.
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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.
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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.