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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.

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
Using
Prism
Image
Prisms
Took
Cherished
Father
Minister
Away
Funeral
Remember
Ministers
Life
Metaphor
Like
Kept

More quotes by Anna Deavere Smith

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Many people are afraid to talk about race because it's so emotionally loaded. We don't have the vocabulary to talk about it. Every day, our vocabulary seems more and more inadequate.
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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.
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I never know when somebody's going to knock on the door of my own unconscious in a way that I wouldn't have anticipated.
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My job in my work is not to acquire power it's to question power.
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You know, real artists, we expose our flaws. We long for intimacy.
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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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That artists are called to be more responsible and 'true' is a tip of hat to their power.
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Use your time to bathe yourself in the gift. Move your hand across the canvas. Go to museums. Make this into an obsession.
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My main concern is theater, and theater does not reflect or mirror society. It has been stingy and selfish, and it has to do better.
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I think as a kid I always liked to listen to people. I loved hearing stories.
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In my profession, I'm around a lot of people whose bodies are their instruments in one way or another.
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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.
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Each person has a literature inside them. But when people lose language, when they have to experiment with putting their thoughts together on the spot-that's what I love most. That's where character lives.
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I have never been in a violent movie or television show.
Anna Deavere Smith
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Those in the margins are always trying to get to the center, and those at the center, frequently in the name of tradition, are trying to keep the margins at a distance.
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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.
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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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I think it's really important to give yourself a very big question that you're working on that you can come home to.
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I have a lot of optimism about new doctors because I think it's really clear that it's a lot of hard work and no guarantee of a lot of money.
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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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