Anna Deavere Smith

I call the language of political figures, pundits and administrators 'the haute couture of language.' ”

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

I think as a kid I always liked to listen to people. I loved hearing stories. ”

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. ”

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. ”

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. ”

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

I would love to have been a documentary filmmaker; I just didn't have the resources to do that. ”

I love studying how people are. Not just what they're saying, but how they are, what they're doing. ”

For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas. ”