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Listening is not just hearing what someone tells you word for word. You have to listen with a heart. I don't want that to sound touchy-feely it is not. It is very hard work.
Anna Deavere Smith
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Anna Deavere Smith
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: September 18
Academic
Actor
Actress
Film Actor
Playwright
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Television Actor
University Teacher
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Anna Smith
Anna Devere Smith
Anna Deveare Smith
Work
Hearing
Listening
Listen
Word
Sound
Someone
Hard
Touchy
Heart
Tells
More quotes by Anna Deavere Smith
What my work is, is my approach to it. It's the practice. And my work is about the effort that I make to get there. And I think if there's anything artistic, it's in that middle space.
Anna Deavere Smith
Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.
Anna Deavere Smith
Do you want to be an artist so that the whole world will look at you, or do you want to be an artist because you would like to use your ability to attract attention, to have the world see itself through you differently?
Anna Deavere Smith
We spend so much time bantering about the words when the real open conversations might very well be our actions. I worry about our rhetoric.
Anna Deavere Smith
You can't teach talent. You can't teach inspiration. You can teach people critical facilities. You can give them techniques. You can teach discipline. And you can teach them about the business.
Anna Deavere Smith
If you say a word often enough it becomes you.
Anna Deavere Smith
I would love to have been a documentary filmmaker I just didn't have the resources to do that.
Anna Deavere Smith
If I do three interviews in a day, I can be exhausted, because the process of hearing everyone requires that I empty out myself. While I'm listening, my own judgments and prejudices certainly come up. But I know I won't get anything unless I get those things out of the way.
Anna Deavere Smith
My work is about giving voice to the unheard, and reiterating the voice of the heard in such a way that you question, or re-examine, what is the truth.
Anna Deavere Smith
I mean, I think a healthy country is a country where people are healthy physically, and a smart country is a country where people are educated.
Anna Deavere Smith
I have never been in a violent movie or television show.
Anna Deavere Smith
I remember from my father's funeral that the minister kept using a metaphor about life of a prism. And I took that away like a cherished image.
Anna Deavere Smith
I don't talk a lot when I interview. My job is to get out of the way.
Anna Deavere Smith
You know, real artists, we expose our flaws. We long for intimacy.
Anna Deavere Smith
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
Discipline — both mental and physical — is crucial.
Anna Deavere Smith
Self-esteem does not come from surrounding yourself with people and things that seem to increase your value. Real self-esteem is an integration of an inner-value with things in the world around you.
Anna Deavere Smith
When I got out of acting school, I was lucky to have gotten any job at all. A lot of people hiring African American actresses - it was right after 'Roots,' and for society, not me, it was great. Nice richly dark-skinned people was the fashion, and I was not.
Anna Deavere Smith
Art simply can’t be stopped.
Anna Deavere Smith
I am interested in personal stories because that's when people become expressive, spontaneous and heartfelt.
Anna Deavere Smith
