I think that art is supposed to be ahead of the times.
— Anna Deavere Smith
For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas.
We owe the government taxes. We owe our creditors interest. What do these powers owe us?
In my profession, I'm around a lot of people whose bodies are their instruments in one way or another.
I don't talk a lot when I interview. My job is to get out of the way.
I mean, I think that - as an actress, in particular, I'm basically a fool, and I see the world upside down.
I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment.
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 see myself first and foremost as a student of expression.
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?
Making your life is ultimately an extraordinarily creative endeavor.
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.
I love studying how people are. Not just what they're saying, but how they are, what they're doing.
You know, all kinds of people inspire me.
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.
Each person has a literature inside them.
You know, real artists, we expose our flaws. We long for intimacy.
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.
