Anna Deavere Smith Quotes

Identity is an assemblage of constellations.

Anna Deavere Smith

• Identity

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Quotes to Explore

• When belief in a god dies, the god dies.

  

  Harlan Ellison
  • God
  • Belief
  • Dies

• Even when we have physical hardships, we can be very happy.

  

  Dalai Lama
  • Happy
  • Physical
  • Hardships

• Luck marches with those who give their very best.

  

  H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
  • Best
  • Chance
  • Luck

• The beauty of kids is they don't care who you are, which is why people like the Obamas like them so much - they treat them like normal people.

  

  Laura Moser
  • People
  • Why
  • Kids

• Nevertheless, there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is becoming a new dominant ideology, if not a religion. Its main weapon is raising the alarm and predicting the human life endangering climate change based on man-made global warming.

  

  Vaclav Klaus
  • Life
  • Change
  • Environmental

• After spending three years of my life looking into this, I am more convinced than ever that the U.S. government's responsibility for the drug problems in South Central Los Angeles and other inner cities is greater than I ever wrote in the newspaper.

  

  Gary Webb
  • Life
  • Government
  • Responsibility

• I've got quite a good poker face. I'm known for being able to keep my emotions very much in check: no one knows how I'm feeling. I can be winning or losing but keep it very much the same.

  

  Rajiv Ouseph
  • Good
  • Feeling
  • Winning

• I have been doing so much. Speaking engagements... producing... developing a half-hour sitcom... working on a movie... leading acting workshops all over the world... and hosting 'My Black Is Beautiful,' an empowerment TV show I'm doing on BET for women.

  

  Tasha Smith
  • World
  • Women
  • Movie

• I have the necessary lack of tact.

  

  Ted Koppel
  • Necessary
  • Lack
  • Tact

• Frankly, we actresses are so much in a hurry. We feel we have very few years to shine in our career, so we neglect our personal life. But for me, both aspects are equally important. I don't want to grow old and have regrets.

  

  Kareena Kapoor Khan
  • Life
  • Important
  • Career

• I'm definitely not a super great guitarist. Ultimately, I just write a lot of love songs.

  

  Vance Joy
  • Great
  • Write
  • Songs

• All kids are selfish. I wanted to do homework and do my thing and call my agent. My mother's needs weren't in my mind at that moment.

  

  Laura Dern
  • Mind
  • Kids
  • Mother

• The key to fashion is, you don't want to look like you're trying. You've gotta be natural.

  

  Hakeem Olajuwon
  • Trying
  • Want
  • Fashion

• One has to have the courage of one's pessimism.

  

  Ian Mcewan
  • Courage
  • Pessimism

• I used to have all these plans and think 'Ah, I have my whole life figured out', but then I realized no matter how much I plan: life happens! So I find myself living day to day trying to do my best, embracing every moment as a learning opportunity and chance to get to know myself a little more.

  

  Q'orianka Kilcher
  • Life
  • Trying
  • Opportunity

• Orthodox Christianity, by playing upon the emotions of man, is able to accomplish wonders toward keeping him in order and relieving his mind. It can frighten or cajole him away from evil more effectively than could reason.

  

  H. P. Lovecraft
  • Mind
  • Man
  • Evil

• Once you've built the big machinery of political power, remember you won't always be the one to run it.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Power
  • Remember
  • Political

• Certainly, grades only matter so much when you're in Hollywood. But I became an utterly motivated, devoted, committed student. I was a good student because I was convinced that it would somehow help me in my quest to become a filmmaker.

  

  Damien Chazelle
  • Good
  • Help
  • Motivated

• I realize how myself and other people have started to almost fool ourselves that it's more important to us and more real than the real world, the offline world, and we value looking at our phone and pixels on a screen more than connecting eye to eye with a human being, which is terrifying to me because we're becoming robots.

  

  Tali Lennox
  • People
  • World
  • Value

• The '80s were fabulous. The '90s sucked, and the '70s were just a sad, sad time in human history. Go 1980s! There's something that's just so cute about that time. And not just yellow nail polish and 'I'm a loner.'

  

  Jennifer Sky
  • Time
  • History
  • Sad

• It may be the optimist in me, but I think America has a uniquely powerful and capacious glue internally. The American identity has always been ethnically and religiously neutral, so within one generation you have Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Jamaican-Americans - they feel American. It's a huge success story.

  

  Amy Chua
  • May
  • American
  • America

• Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one's identity as a being of worth and dignity.

  

  Rollo May
  • Experience
  • Identity
  • Emotion

• As an actor, what you really want to do is communicate with people - this is my aim, my principle aim.

  

  Pierfrancesco Favino
  • People

• Identity is an assemblage of constellations.

  

  Anna Deavere Smith
  • Identity