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

More quotes by 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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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
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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.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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
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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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I call the language of political figures, pundits and administrators the haute couture of language.
Anna Deavere Smith
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In my profession, I'm around a lot of people whose bodies are their instruments in one way or another.
Anna Deavere Smith
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Each person has a literature inside them.
Anna Deavere Smith
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Confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition.
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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Probably the person who said the only color in Los Angeles is green was right.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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.
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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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
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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.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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.'
Anna Deavere Smith
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You know, real artists, we expose our flaws. We long for intimacy.
Anna Deavere Smith
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I am interested in personal stories because that's when people become expressive, spontaneous and heartfelt.
Anna Deavere Smith
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You know if we were to look back and how we were in 1955 living in Jim Crow, living in segregation, living in segregated schools, it's hard to believe that it was America, but it really was.
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