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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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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
Well
Conversation
Real
Spend
Much
Worry
Time
Open
Words
Bantering
Action
Conversations
Wells
Rhetoric
Might
Actions

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Probably the person who said the only color in Los Angeles is green was right.
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You hang around actors, or dancers, the minute you sneeze, everybody has a remedy, and we're all on a million different kinds of diets, and different kinds of things that we do for exercise.
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You know, interesting minds usually do hold more than one idea at a time.
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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.
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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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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?
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Your desire to communicate must be bigger than your relationship with the chaotic and unfair realities.
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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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I was a mimic when I was a child. I mimicked the teacher and made friends that way, actually. That was a very subversive activity, because I was a goody-goody who never got in trouble. But if I went off in the corner and mimicked the teacher, people loved it.
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Learning is a tunnel experience that makes us think more broadly.
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My work is about giving voice to the unheard, and reiterating the voice of the heard in such a way that you question, or re-examine, what is the truth.
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I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment.
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I think what I am is a convener I like to convene people around ideas.
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I think as a kid I always liked to listen to people. I loved hearing stories.
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Do you want to be an artist so that the whole world will look at you, or do you want to be an artist because you would like to use your ability to attract attention, to have the world see itself through you differently?
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Some people study a text very deeply. The people are my text. I study their words and what their words sound like, over and over again.
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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.
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People in power have to be careful about what comes out of their mouth. They have to find exactly the right word that can't be attacked.
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I see myself as not a typical theater person, but a person who uses the theater as a place to meet people and explore ideas.
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If you think about what acting is supposed to be, my job is to disappear.
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