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
Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.
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.
Identity is an assemblage of constellations.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 write plays about big, intense subjects.
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.
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.
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.
I am lucky: I have fantastic doctors and a fantastic dentist.
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.
Suddenly in high school, I'm in a predominantly Jewish atmosphere. Jewish people were my gate to white America.
I have never been in a violent movie or television show.
Making your life is ultimately an extraordinarily creative endeavor.
You know, real artists, we expose our flaws. We long for intimacy.
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.
I love studying how people are. Not just what they're saying, but how they are, what they're doing.
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.
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?
I call the language of political figures, pundits and administrators 'the haute couture of language.'
Not that many people, even contemporary writers, write about right now.
I mean, I think that - as an actress, in particular, I'm basically a fool, and I see the world upside down.
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.
In my profession, I'm around a lot of people whose bodies are their instruments in one way or another.
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 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.
For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas.
I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment.
I think that art is supposed to be ahead of the times.
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.
I think as a kid I always liked to listen to people. I loved hearing stories.
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.
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.
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.
Because of the generation in which I came into the world, there were expectations. Of course there were expectations. It was something having to do with being a respectable Negro woman who would make the people in Baltimore proud.
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.
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.
That artists are called to be more responsible and 'true' is a tip of hat to their power.
Movies, as evidenced by a chorus of protesting and celebrating Americans, influence broader trends.
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.
You know, interesting minds usually do hold more than one idea at a time.
I am interested in personal stories because that's when people become expressive, spontaneous and heartfelt.
