Best 74 quotes of Anna Deavere Smith on MyQuotes

A lot of acting techniques are very self-oriented.

Artists are the people that no matter what, pick up the pen, pick up a paintbrush. They take the time to translate what is happening to create something that resonates deeply with the rest of the people that are caught in the middle of their own reality.

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.

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.

Commit to finding the true nature of art. Go for that thing no one can teach you.

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.

Confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition.

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?

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.

Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.

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.'

I am interested in personal stories because that's when people become expressive, spontaneous and heartfelt.

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

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

Identity is an assemblage of constellations.

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

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.

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

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.

I have never been in a violent movie or television show.

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.

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

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.

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.

I see myself as not a typical theater person, but a person who uses the theater as a place to meet people and explore ideas.

I see myself first and foremost as a student of expression.

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

I think it's really important to give yourself a very big question that you're working on that you can come home to.

I think that art is supposed to be ahead of the times.

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.

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 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.

I went as far away from home as possible in terms of the development of my imagination.

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

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

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.

Making your life is ultimately an extraordinarily creative endeavor.

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.

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

My job in my work is not to acquire power; it's to question power.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Poverty makes it very difficult in an already competitive world for kids to get on a straight track where they can actually love learning.

Probably the person who said the only color in Los Angeles is green was right.

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?

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.

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.