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I am lucky: I have fantastic doctors and a fantastic dentist.

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
Dentist
Fantastic
Doctors
Lucky

More quotes by Anna Deavere Smith

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I have never been in a violent movie or television show.
Anna Deavere Smith
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I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment.
Anna Deavere Smith
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Even jealousy is based on fantasies: a fantasy that someone else has what belongs to you.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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
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I think what I am is a convener I like to convene people around ideas.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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
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I think it's really important to give yourself a very big question that you're working on that you can come home to.
Anna Deavere Smith
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I think we need leadership that helps us remember that part of what we are about is caring about more than the person right next to us, but the folks across the way.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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?
Anna Deavere Smith
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Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.
Anna Deavere Smith
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I think as a kid I always liked to listen to people. I loved hearing stories.
Anna Deavere Smith
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President Obama called for a 'we' nation in his Inauguration Address. Art convenes. It is not just inspirational. It is aspirational. It pricks the walls of our compartmentalized minds, opens our hearts and makes us brave. And that's what we need most in our country today.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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
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For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas.
Anna Deavere Smith
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Perhaps art is a quest for the perfect, or even the imperfect. Reality always falls short on both sides.
Anna Deavere Smith
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I mean, I think that - as an actress, in particular, I'm basically a fool, and I see the world upside down.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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
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If you think about what acting is supposed to be, my job is to disappear.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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.
Anna Deavere Smith
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Art should take what is complex and render it simply. It takes a lot of skill, human understanding, stamina, courage, energy, and heart to do that.
Anna Deavere Smith