Quotes from Anna Deavere Smith

This moment is in the tradition of protest poetry and art that goes back centuries. I hope that this pain will lead to beautiful works of arts."-Anna Deavere Smith

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

Well, the terrible thing right now, and I don't know the statistics, but there's a growing concern in some communities about how rapidly people are sent from school to jail, how quickly they're put into the criminal justice system. And of course the rapidly growing number of brown people, both men and women, in prison. And this is terrible.

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

There's not a lot of flash about me.

In my own life I'm frequently in predominantly white atmospheres.

Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.

Making your life is ultimately an extraordinarily creative endeavor.

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 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.

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

You are an explorer. You understand that every time you go into the studio, you are after something that does not yet exist.

You know if we were to look back and how we were in 1955 living in Jim Crow, living in segregation, living in segregated schools, it's hard to believe that it was America, but it really was.

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

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.

Use your time to bathe yourself in the gift. Move your hand across the canvas. Go to museums. Make this into an obsession.

You know, interesting minds usually do hold more than one idea at a time.

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.

Identity is an assemblage of constellations.

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.

You know, all kinds of people inspire me.

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

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.

You know, real artists, we expose our flaws. We long for intimacy.