Anna Deavere Smith

"Racism has been for everyone like a horrible, tragic car crash, and we've all been heavily sedated from it. If we don't come into consciousness of this tragedy, there's going to be a violent awakening we don't want. The question is, can we wake up?"

"People who are sick, or who have been sick, or have come close to death have a lot to say - and they want you to hear it."

"Learning is a tunnel experience that makes us think more broadly."

"Somehow we can't live outside the politics of race. There's something very deep in all of us, that is taught to us when we are very, very little. Which is the disrespect and fear of the other."

"I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment."

"The American idea is as promising, imaginative, and full of the unexpected as the land itself. The land represents freedom - the frontier, the ability to make a new future with your own bare hands."