Anna Deavere Smith Quotes

I write plays about big, intense subjects.

Anna Deavere Smith

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• To be honest, I think, for me, the power is always with art. The art world clearly couldn't happen without art.

  

  Hans-Ulrich Obrist
  • World
  • Art
  • Power

• I'm confident in who I am. I've come to a place in my life where I've accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That's just the way I've always tried to be. It didn't change when I became a star.

  

  Lady Gaga
  • People
  • Life
  • Feeling

• I can't even read notes. But I can teach someone how to make a guitar smoke.

  

  Ace Frehley Kiss
  • Teach
  • Guitar
  • Smoke

• A high-quality public education can build much-needed skills and knowledge. It can help children reach their God-given potential. It can stabilize communities and democracies. It can strengthen economies. It can combat the kind of fear and despair that evolves into hatred.

  

  Randi Weingarten
  • God
  • Children
  • Help

• Sports should not become routine. It should be about passion.

  

  Kapil Dev
  • Passion
  • Sports
  • Routine

• It's morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money.

  

  W. C. Fields
  • Money
  • Wrong
  • Allow

• If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress.

  

  Barack Obama
  • Progress
  • Path
  • Walking

• I was ready to get out of the box and play something a little different than what everybody has seen.

  

  Ice Cube
  • Different
  • Play
  • Ready

• Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.

  

  Barbara Tuchman
  • Discipline
  • Habit
  • Easy

• Organizations are trying to save extra money. Players are trying to get extra money. That's the way it is.

  

  Lamar Odom
  • Trying
  • Money
  • Way

• I've been the lull, and I've been the storm and also somewhere in between. But that's OK. I love the limelight after all.

  

  Karan Johar
  • Storm
  • Limelight
  • Lull

• Looking back at my career, I wish I knew then what I know now... that gender bias is built into the system, and it's unconscious in many ways. I wish I had the maturity and courage to have pushed back more. I was always trying to be a 'good girl' and play by the rules.

  

  Valerie Plame
  • Good
  • Trying
  • Career

• If you stood me in a costume next to a computer graphic of the same-looking character, I think there would be a difference. And many movie fans I've spoken to would rather see an actor in a costume than CG.

  

  Warwick Davis
  • Character
  • Movie
  • Think

• I can't run my career based on someone else's ideology.

  

  Yami Gautam
  • Career
  • Run
  • Someone

• I've had times where I've joked, like, 'I'm going to move to Vermont and become a painter.' And sometimes that joke felt like, 'Oh that's a good idea.' But it was only, like, a daydream for a moment to, like, escape.

  

  Kate Micucci
  • Good
  • Sometimes
  • Moment

• I think that's what is so cool about performing. When there is a show to do, you get up there and do it.

  

  Kate Micucci
  • Up
  • Think
  • You

• I'm not really a model.

  

  Gaspard Ulliel
  • Model
  • Really

• I worry from the moment I take a job. I worry about how I'm going to do it, if I can do it... Then I walk on set and the director says, 'Roll', and all of a sudden, all of it disappears and it's all happening, and I relax, and I'm doing what I do, and I'm not even thinking about it.

  

  Jack Nicholson
  • Thinking
  • Job
  • Worry

• Here is one of the best bits of advice every given about the fine art of human relationships. 'If there is any one secret of success,' says Henry Ford, 'it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.'

  

  Dale Carnegie
  • Art
  • Success
  • Lies

• Sam is a repetitive, comic process that merely marks time: he gets nowhere, but then he doesn’t want to get anywhere. Although there is no possibility of any real change in Sam, he never stops changing: Sam stays there inside Sam, getting less and less like the rest of mankind and more and more like Sam, Sam squared, Sam cubed, Sam to the nth.

  

  Randall Jarrell
  • Time
  • Real
  • Rest

• When you're on a lower-budget film, with one guy who maybe has a camera strapped to him, you're a much bigger part of that pie. You can be a sliver in a big Hollywood movie, but you can be a quarter of that indie movie pie. And I feel like, first of all, there is a real freedom that you feel from that, because it's like, you know what, if this is terrible, nobody's gonna ever see it, so I can be more brave.

  

  Cynthia Nixon
  • Real
  • Movie
  • Guy

• I write plays about big, intense subjects.

  

  Anna Deavere Smith