Quotes by Anna Deavere Smith

About Anna Deavere Smith:

Anna Deavere Smith is an American actress, playwright, and professor. She is currently the artist-in-residence at the Center for American Progress. Smith is widely known for her roles as National Security Advisor Dr. Nancy McNally in The West Wing (2000–06), and as hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus in the Showtime series Nurse Jackie (2009–15). She is a recipient of The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize (2013), one of the richest prizes in the American arts, with a remuneration of $300,000.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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 mos...

Anna Deavere Smith

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

Anna Deavere Smith

Commit to finding the true nature of art. Go for that thing no one can teach you. Go for that communion, that real communion with your soul, and the discipline of expressing that communion with others. That doesn't come from competition. That comes f...

Anna Deavere Smith

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

Anna Deavere Smith

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...

Anna Deavere Smith

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

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

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

Anna Deavere Smith

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

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 ...

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

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

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.

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 ...

Anna Deavere Smith

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

Anna Deavere Smith

Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.

Anna Deavere Smith

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.

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 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

Making your life is ultimately an extraordinarily creative endeavor.

Anna Deavere Smith

Author Bio

  • NameAnna Deavere Smith
  • DescriptionAmerican actress, playwright and professor
  • BornSeptember 18, 1950
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionActor; Author
  • AwardsMacArthur Fellows Program; National Humanities Medal