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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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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
Come
Wake
Going
Horrible
Like
Violent
Tragedy
Heavily
Car
Crash
Consciousness
Awakening
Question
Tragic
Everyone
Racism

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For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas.
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I love studying how people are. Not just what they're saying, but how they are, what they're doing.
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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.
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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.
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I would love to have been a documentary filmmaker I just didn't have the resources to do that.
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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.
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Art simply can’t be stopped.
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Artists are the people that no matter what, pick up the pen, pick up a paintbrush. They take the time to translate what is happening to create something that resonates deeply with the rest of the people that are caught in the middle of their own reality.
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I see myself first and foremost as a student of expression.
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I think that art is supposed to be ahead of the times.
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I think what I am is a convener I like to convene people around ideas.
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Movies, as evidenced by a chorus of protesting and celebrating Americans, influence broader trends.
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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.
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