Anna Deavere Smith Quotes

The perception of identity is so intimately bound up with the perception of the human form.

I have a very healthy dose of scepticism towards what identity is and what personas are, maybe because of my life journey. Identity is something so malleable.

A man's name is not like a mantle which merely hangs about him...but a perfectly fitting garment, which, like the skin, has grown over him, at which one cannot rake and scrape without injuring the man himself.

We're all products of what we want to project to the world. Even people who don't spend any time, or think they don't, on preparing themselves for the world out there - I think that ultimately they have for their whole lives groomed themselves to be a certain way, to present a face to the world.

I suppose it's fair to say that I am interested in the invention of self or selves. We're all born into certain circumstances with particular physical traits, unique developmental experiences, geographical and historical contexts.

My mother helped me identify myself the way the world would identify me. Bloodlines didn't matter as much as how I would be perceived.

When you have a lot of people telling you what you are and perceiving you in a certain way, it's difficult to find your own identity.

Everybody has their own story - it's who you are. If I wasn't five-foot, I wouldn't be who I am!

As we grow up, we're constantly defining ourselves. In my case: Caucasian, male, born in Iowa, live in Boston, Zen Buddhist, good at learning languages. With countless labels, I build up this creation I call my self.

Our identities really are a constant negotiation between the story we tell about ourselves and the narrative our societies like to recite.

People have multiple identities.

Brands communicate in two directions: they help us tell other people something about ourselves, but they also help us form ideas about who we are.

You are like you are, because you tell yourself that you are that way.

I am, it seems, interested in people with multiple identities. I think we all have multiple identities.

If I'm in a gathering of filmmakers, I'm first and foremost a British Indian; if I'm in a gathering of British Indians, I'm a woman director. There are so many sides to who I am that I change all the time.

Identity in the form of continuity of personality is an extremely important characteristic of the individual.

You think you know who you are, and then other people have these other ideas.

I know who I am by now. And I am my own brand.

I try not to define myself. Other people are going to do that for you anyway.

I'm always trying to slip out of those labels everyone tries to put round your neck. We all have multiple selves.

I don't think a name defines the core of who you are.

By reshaping or decorating our outer selves, we express our inner sense of self: 'I like that' becomes 'I'm like that.'

I couldn't imagine living my life with another name.

There's no such thing as identity: it's something we have to believe in to make life more tolerable.

I think everyone self-mythologizes.