Letters to a Young Artist Quotes

“We who are in the arts are at the risk of being in a popularity contest rather than a profession. If that fact causes you despair . . . pick another profession. Your desire to communicate must be bigger than your relationship with the chaotic and unfair realities . . . We have to create our own standards of discipline.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, Letters to a Young Artist

“You are an explorer. You understand that every time you go into the studio, you are after something that does not yet exist.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, Letters to a Young Artist

“Commit to finding the true nature of art. Go for that thing no one can teach you. Go for that communion, that real communion with your soul, and the discipline of expressing that communion with others. That doesn't come from competition. That comes from being one with what you are doing.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, Letters to a Young Artist

“Even jealousy is based on fantasies: a fantasy that someone else has what belongs to you.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, Letters to a Young Artist

“My job in my work is not to acquire power; it's to question power.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, Letters to a Young Artist

“Art requires that you make something else exist that is a representation of what your feeling is, or your idea.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, Letters to a Young Artist

“Rhetoric is what shapes history, if not truth.”
― Anna Deavere Smith, Letters to a Young Artist