“ The individuals inside are frequently fighting that their individual voices be heard, while the walls of the place, which are the mask, and the perception, are reluctant to give over to the voices of… Anna Deavere Smith
“ We spend so much time bantering about the words when the real open conversations might very well be our actions. I worry about our rhetoric. Anna Deavere Smith
“ 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… Anna Deavere Smith
“ 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. Anna Deavere Smith
“ 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 abo… Anna Deavere Smith
“ Even jealousy is based on fantasies: a fantasy that someone else has what belongs to you. Anna Deavere Smith
“ 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… Anna Deavere Smith
“ The American idea is as promising, imaginative, and full of the unexpected as the land itself. The land represents freedom - the frontier, the ability to make a new future with your own bare hands. Anna Deavere Smith
“ 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 l… Anna Deavere Smith
“ 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. Anna Deavere Smith
“ 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 hear… Anna Deavere Smith
“ I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment. Anna Deavere Smith
“ Commit to finding the true nature of art. Go for that thing no one can teach you. Go for that communion, that real communion with your soul, and the discipline of expressing that communion with others… Anna Deavere Smith
“ 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 me… Anna Deavere Smith
“ 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. Anna Deavere Smith
“ 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 in… Anna Deavere Smith
