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" 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

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" I don't talk a lot when I interview. My job is to get out of the way. "

" Making your life is ultimately an extraordinarily creative endeavor. "

" 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. "

" You know, real artists, we expose our flaws. We long for intimacy. "

" I mean, I think that - as an actress, in particular, I'm basically a fool, and I see the world upside down. "

" 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 see myself first and foremost as a student of expression. "

" 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. "

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

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

" Friendship is a wildly underrated medication. "

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

Anna Deavere Smith

Taxes

Owe

" 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. "

" Each person has a literature inside them. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Identity is an assemblage of constellations. "

" 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. "

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

Anna Deavere Smith

People

I Am

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