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

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If you say a word often enough it becomes you.
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Learning is a tunnel experience that makes us think more broadly.
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Each person has a literature inside them.
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Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.
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That artists are called to be more responsible and 'true' is a tip of hat to their power.
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I think as a kid I always liked to listen to people. I loved hearing stories.
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What you are will show, ultimately. Start now, every day, becoming, in your actions, your regular actions, what you would like to become in the bigger scheme of things.
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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.
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Your desire to communicate must be bigger than your relationship with the chaotic and unfair realities.
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Hope is when you look out the window and you go, 'It doesn't look good at all, but I'm going to go beyond what I see to give people visions of what could be.'
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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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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.
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I am lucky: I have fantastic doctors and a fantastic dentist.
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Identity is an assemblage of constellations.
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For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas.
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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.
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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.
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