David Small Quotes

The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.

In my country, I am just a common man... a nobody.

Silence equals nonexistence. If I don't raise my voice, it's like I never existed.

Silence and invisibility go hand in hand with powerlessness.

There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.

If what I read doesn't reflect my life - whether I'm gay or Latino or on welfare - doesn't that really mean that my life is not valuable?

As long as I am nothing but a ghost of the civil dead, I can do nothing.

Unless you've been touched personally, it's difficult to see, but there are millions of people who have no voice whatsoever.

All of my plays are about people who have been marginalized... erased from the public record.

We must speak up for those who do not dare to speak, those who are not allowed to, and those who cannot.

I don't want to be 'de-ethnicised.' I hate it when people say, 'Oh I don't even think of you as a woman,' or, 'I don't even think of you as a black woman.' Well what do you think of me as then? A loaf of bread?

I felt like that growing up - that I didn't have a voice.

My voice was not heard, the questions were not asked that I wanted to see asked.

Bondage is hoarse, and may not speak aloud.

Powerlessness and silence go together.

I thought about all those people whose suffering had been erased, and I thought, 'Why can't they speak? Why can't I undo some of that erasure?'

So much of my work has been about disappearing.

The leadership of the Palestinian Authority is not held in high regard by most of the population of the West Bank. They're seen as living relatively high off the hog and certainly not accomplishing anything vis-a-vis the Israelis.

I have experienced things that I think many Canadians have gone through - the feeling of not belonging, the feeling of being a victim, of being hurt, being marginalized.

Testimony always comes from people who are in some way disempowered.

I always had to fight for the chance to get people to hear me.

I've been silenced in America.

I always thought that when I got into this business that I was going to have to downplay my Asianness and downplay my queerness, which is not an easy thing for me to do.

When you've been told in ways large and small your whole life that your voice doesn't matter and that you don't count, it's not an easy thing to get over.

I remember when I used to go to coaches' meetings and stuff like that and I would never say anything - I would just sit in a corner and sometimes coaches wouldn't even shake my hand.