Anna Deavere Smith Quotes

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Anna Deavere Smith

Profession : Actress

Birth : September 18, 1950

Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.

Anna Deavere Smith

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.

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

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.

Anna Deavere Smith

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.

Anna Deavere Smith

Each person has a literature inside them.

Anna Deavere Smith

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.

Anna Deavere Smith

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.

Anna Deavere Smith

There's not a lot of flash about me.

Anna Deavere Smith

Making your life is ultimately an extraordinarily creative endeavor.

Anna Deavere Smith

Identity is an assemblage of constellations.

Anna Deavere Smith

I write plays about big, intense subjects.

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 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.

Anna Deavere Smith

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.

Anna Deavere Smith

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

Anna Deavere Smith

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

Anna Deavere Smith

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

Anna Deavere Smith

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

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 meal, that that should nourish you.

Anna Deavere Smith

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

Anna Deavere Smith