Anna Deavere Smith Quotes

You are what you choose to identify with. You have the choice. A mouse raised by pigeons.

The very act of thinking about power in our lives and experiences creates a process of revelation and self-analysis that may even make us look at ourselves in a new light... thinking about power and its complex manifestations may not simply lead to a better understanding of the abstract complexities of society, but may have an effect on one?s own image and identity. Perhaps a warning label should be placed on the cover.

I thought that I wasn't an essayist because I just didn't see myself in a lot of the essays that were popular at the time. That's why I joined the poetry program in grad school.

I have no interest in ever coming out. I’m just trying to make the pictures look good; I’m not into trying to make myself look good. And besides, it’s a pretty safe bet that the reality of me would be a crushing disappointment to a couple of 15-year-old kids out there.

He defined himself almost wholly in the negative: It was not who he was, it was who he was not.

Attachment is the shadow of the ego. Attachments are immediately created wherever you see 'I am'.

Her nose wrinkle up cause now she got to remember to say she Mae Mobley Three, when her whole life she can remember, she been telling people she Mae Mobley Two. When you little, you only get asked two questions, what's your name and how old you is, so you better get em right.

I don't want to put nobody on blast but in the beginning it's like somebody telling you somebody looks like you and you've been looking in the mirror your whole life and nobody looks like you. Same thing with me.

At present our only true names are nicknames.

People were people, even if they had four legs and had called themselves names like Dangerous Beans, which is the kind of name you gave yourself if you learned to read before you understood what all the words actually meant.

Babies are born whole and then they go through experiences in life that chip away at some of that, and it becomes learned behavior.

Maybe your history just repeats and repeats until it batters you enough to snap the seams that hold you together

When you tell people, your world changes, your identity changes and people treat you differently. And then, not only do you have to deal with your own emotional response to what's going on, but you take on everybody else's emotional response.

I changed my name because it didn't fit with the way I saw myself.

I would introduce myself if it were not useless. The name I had last night will not be the same as the name I have tonight. For the moment, then, let me say that I am thinking of Sam Slovoda.

If you've been fat, you will always feel and see the world as a fat person; you know how difficult it is... It's the same coming from a working-class background... it never leaves you.

I'm not a woman! Let's make that very clear! Oh I don't know, maybe I am. I am an American woman. Or 65 percent of me is.

Don't fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become it.

If you put a label on yourself, people will pigeonhole you.

We have a problem with any labels that people try to hang on us, because all it does is drag you down.

Was it really so far-fetched to think that words had a way of shaping a person's whole life?

I once was the walrus, now I'm John.

Every day we choose who we are by how we define ourselves.

I can never be the hero now. You have to be young and all that stuff. I used to be the hero.

As women, we're always in negotiation with how we're being perceived versus how we feel.