Anna Deavere Smith Quotes

If you can't figure out your purpose, figure out your passion. For your passion will lead you right into your purpose.

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.

It's getting harder to make decisions to just want to do something to work... I'm trying to find things that are extremely challenging or mean something to me deeply.

I used to think I had ambition... but now I'm not so sure. It may have been only discontent. They're easily confused.

I was really rudderless at one point my life. And once I started reading books, then I got the idea that maybe I could become a writer. I had a goal. And every day when I got up, there was a reason.

Find your vision, and let it guide you in all that you do. If you lack vision, look inside yourself. Draw on your natural gifts and desires.

What is it you want? That's a question that we all get posed sometimes internally and sometimes externally.

You will recognize your own path when you come upon it, because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need.

The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change.

When I was in the eighth grade, I wrote this huge long paper about how I had no idea what I was gonna do with my life, but that I wanted to make a difference and touch even if it was like one person's life... inspire them.

Dreams don't have deadlines. I'm thinking of doing bigger and better things and having more fun with it.

Every character is asking: 'What's my place? Why am I here? I don't want the answer to be 'Just because.' You find your own purpose. Each finds the reason to be here and how to contribute.

What's interesting is with a lot of the work I do through my foundation, the 'Manifest Your Destiny' foundation, we really encourage people, and we attempt to empower, uplift and inspire people to live out their dreams, live out their destiny.

I think of myself as a catalyst of action and a messenger of hope, turning people onto themselves and turning people onto their dreams.

I have reached a place in my life where I need to sit down and say, 'Well, what do I do? What's best for me?' I need to look into options for the future.

I've always had real trouble knowing what my actual desires and goals are. I've just been dragged along by fate.

I record myself talking. I have a journal. And when I listen back, I remember why I wanted certain things. I listen to me at 16, saying 'I really wanna be on TV... I want a movie, a huge movie...' and I'm just like, 'Yo, I'm humbled. I'm living a life I imagined.'

I don't know if I work in order to do something, or in order to know why I can't do what I want to do.

But once I acclimated and really used fame for what it was offering me as a tool to serve my life purpose of inspiring and contributing, then it started to get fun again.

I never struggled with trying to figure out what it was I wanted to do or what made the sparks go for me.

Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward.

I decided to write books, just to prove to myself that I was still alive, if nothing else.

I don't want to do anything that I'm not passionate about.

For true success ask yourself these four questions: Why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now?

To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.