Quotes from Anna Deavere Smith

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.

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.

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?

Suddenly in high school, I'm in a predominantly Jewish atmosphere. Jewish people were my gate to white America.

President Obama called for a 'we' nation in his Inauguration Address. Art convenes. It is not just inspirational. It is aspirational. It pricks the walls of our compartmentalized minds, opens our hearts and makes us brave. And that's what we need most in our country today.

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.'

That artists are called to be more responsible and 'true' is a tip of hat to their power.

Your desire to communicate must be bigger than your relationship with the chaotic and unfair realities.

Not that many people, even contemporary writers, write about right now.

I talk about race a lot. It's been my work ever since I came out of acting school. But it's true that in a way talking about race is a taboo. Because so many of our debates about race have to do not with race but with what we are willing to see, what we will not see and what we don't want to see.

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.

We owe the government taxes. We owe our creditors interest. What do these powers owe us?

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.

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

A lot of acting techniques are very self-oriented.

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.

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?

Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.

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

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.

President Obama called for a 'we' nation in his Inauguration Address. Art convenes. It is not just inspirational. It is aspirational. It pricks the walls of our compartmentalized minds, opens our hearts and makes us brave. And that's what we need most in our country today.

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 made a real specific decision when I came out of school and most artists were writing about home - if you were a woman, you were writing about being a woman - and I decided not to do that, write about what you know. That's not what I do. I went as far away from home as possible in terms of the development of my imagination.

I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment.