Anna deavere smith quotes

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

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.

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 see myself first and foremost as a student of expression.

I never know when somebody's going to knock on the door of my own unconscious in a way that I wouldn't have anticipated.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

What my work is, is my approach to it. It's the practice. And my work is about the effort that I make to get there. And I think if there's anything artistic, it's in that middle space.

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

Identity is an assemblage of constellations.

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.

I happen to be a hopeaholic. I tend to look at problems as an opportunity to do some work.

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.

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

They say that art should stand the test of time. Life lasts a limited amount of time. Mountains and trees and earth will outlive human beings, but we don't know if they will be here always. Art does outlast the life span of its maker. Art should communicate to an increasing circle of strangers-people who do not know the artist, but come to know the work, and through the work, come to know something about the humanity of the artist that rings with their own humanity.

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

I am not myself; I am the potential of myself.

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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

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.

Some people study a text very deeply. The people are my text. I study their words and what their words sound like, over and over again.

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.

You can't teach talent. You can't teach inspiration. You can teach people critical facilities. You can give them techniques. You can teach discipline. And you can teach them about the business.

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

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.

A lot of acting techniques are very self-oriented.

I think some of our most talented people are not going to pick the arts as a way that they're going to spend their lives.

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

Art simply can’t be stopped.

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

What you are will show, ultimately. Start now, every day, becoming, in your actions, your regular actions, what you would like to become in the bigger scheme of things.

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.

Each person has a literature inside them.

Perhaps art is a quest for the perfect, or even the imperfect. Reality always falls short on both sides.

For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas.

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

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.

Some people study a text very deeply. The people are my text. I study their words and what their words sound like, over and over again. When I was a kid, my grandfather said that "if you say a word often enough, it becomes you." Thinking of that later in life gave me this idea that I could try to become America by learning the words of people from many aspects of the country. It doesn't matter how educated they are. By living in the world and living their experiences, they bring extraordinary truths. I try to do those truths justice.

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.

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.

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

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

Even jealousy is based on fantasies: a fantasy that someone else has what belongs to you.

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

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

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 lucky: I have fantastic doctors and a fantastic dentist.

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.

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.

You've heard that old expression from Shakespeare, 'Just speak the speech'? The words themselves will take you to the reality of the character. And so this led me to interview people.

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.

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.

Then everyone leaves, and you are left, each night, to your own devices with a crowd of interesting people - most of whom you don't know - sitting in the dark.

When I was a kid, my grandfather said that "if you say a word often enough, it becomes you." Thinking of that later in life gave me this idea that I could try to become America by learning the words of people from many aspects of the country.

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 love studying how people are. Not just what they're saying, but how they are, what they're doing.

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

If you say a word often enough it becomes you.

Those in the margins are always trying to get to the center, and those at the center, frequently in the name of tradition, are trying to keep the margins at a distance.

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.

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 the individuals. Those in the margins are always trying to get to the center, and those at the center, frequently in the name of tradition, are trying to keep the margins at a distance. Part of the identity of a place is the tension between those in the margins, and those in the center, and they all live behind the walls which wear the tradition.

We who are in the arts are at the risk of being in a popularity contest rather than a profession. If that fact causes you despair . . . pick another profession. Your desire to communicate must be bigger than your relationship with the chaotic and unfair realities . . . We have to create our own standards of discipline.

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.

Discipline — both mental and physical — is crucial.

Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.

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.

Confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition.

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

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

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 think what I am is a "convener"; I like to convene people around ideas.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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.