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I'm interested when things are upside down - because there are so many possibilities in that one moment. There is a lot that is exposed.

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
Exposed
Possibilities
Possibility
Interested
Moment
Moments
Many
Things
Upside

More quotes by Anna Deavere Smith

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Your desire to communicate must be bigger than your relationship with the chaotic and unfair realities.
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I happen to be a hopeaholic. I tend to look at problems as an opportunity to do some work.
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You know, real artists, we expose our flaws. We long for intimacy.
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For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas.
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I think that art is supposed to be ahead of the times.
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Even jealousy is based on fantasies: a fantasy that someone else has what belongs to you.
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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.
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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I am interested in personal stories because that's when people become expressive, spontaneous and heartfelt.
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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Movies, as evidenced by a chorus of protesting and celebrating Americans, influence broader trends.
Anna Deavere Smith
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I am lucky: I have fantastic doctors and a fantastic dentist.
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Somehow we can't live outside the politics of race. There's something very deep in all of us, that is taught to us when we are very, very little. Which is the disrespect and fear of the other.
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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If you think about what acting is supposed to be, my job is to disappear.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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.
Anna Deavere Smith
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Poverty makes it very difficult in an already competitive world for kids to get on a straight track where they can actually love learning.
Anna Deavere Smith
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What my work is, is my approach to it. It's the practice. And my work is about the effort that I make to get there. And I think if there's anything artistic, it's in that middle space.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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.
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