Anna Deavere Smith Quotes

Each person has a literature inside them. But when people lose language when they have to experiment with putting their thoughts together on the spot-that's what I love most. That's where character lives.

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

We spend so much time bantering about the words when the real open conversations might very well be our actions. I worry about our rhetoric.

The individuals inside are frequently fighting that their individual voices be heard, while the walls of the place, which are the mask, and the perception, are reluctant to give over to the voices of the individuals. Those in the margins are always trying to get to the center, and those at the center, frequently in the name of tradition, are trying to keep the margins at a distance. Part of the identity of a place is the tension between those in the margins, and those in the center, and they all live behind the walls which wear the tradition.

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 the surface to find words, and at the same time, it's a moment when they want to communicate very badly. They're digging deep and projecting out at the same time.

Rhetoric is what shapes history, if not truth.