Anna Deavere Smith

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

To live your life well, and have respect for what came before or after - there's a strong respect for that in African culture.

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.

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

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.

When you think about it, words can break your heart, or they can change your day.

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.

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

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

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

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.

I think a lot of L.A. is something like USC - this incredible white culture living in the midst of color, and no obvious reaction to it at all. I mean, they have guards at the gate at USC - guards at the gate of a major university! And the guards chase young black boys away - I've seen it, chasing 8-year-old boys.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

A lot of acting techniques are very self-oriented.

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

There's not a lot of flash about me.

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

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.

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.

Over time, my students have gotten richer and more educated.

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

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.

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.

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.

Identity is an assemblage of constellations.

We would like doctors to listen, but the fact is, we better be ready to be able to talk to them. You're going to have to be an active participant in that conversation, so I'd say the American people are going to need ways of stepping up to the conversation.

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'm interested when things are upside down - because there are so many possibilities in that one moment. There is a lot that is exposed.

You hang around actors, or dancers, the minute you sneeze, everybody has a remedy, and we're all on a million different kinds of diets, and different kinds of things that we do for exercise.

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.

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.

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

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

Making your life is ultimately an extraordinarily creative endeavor.

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

Each person has a literature inside them.

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?

In my profession, I'm around a lot of people whose bodies are their instruments in one way or another.

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

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

You know, all kinds of people inspire me.