Anna Deavere Smith Zitate auf Englisch

A lot of acting techniques are very self-oriented.

Anna Deavere Smith

Identity is an assemblage of constellations.

Anna Deavere Smith

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.

Anna Deavere Smith

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

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

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

Anna Deavere Smith

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.

Anna Deavere Smith

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.

Anna Deavere Smith

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

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 we don't want. The question is, can we wake up?

Anna Deavere Smith

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

Anna Deavere Smith

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

Anna Deavere Smith

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

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

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.

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

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.

Anna Deavere Smith

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

Anna Deavere Smith

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.

Anna Deavere Smith

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

Anna Deavere Smith

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

Anna Deavere Smith

Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.

Anna Deavere Smith

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.

Anna Deavere Smith

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

Anna Deavere Smith

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.

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

Not that many people, even contemporary writers, write about right now.

Anna Deavere Smith

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.

Anna Deavere Smith