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Then everyone leaves, and you are left, each night, to your own devices with a crowd of interesting people - most of whom you don't know - sitting in the dark.

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
Leaves
Sitting
Dark
Interesting
Everyone
Left
Devices
Night
Crowd
People
Crowds

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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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Confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition.
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I call the language of political figures, pundits and administrators the haute couture of language.
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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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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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I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment.
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Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.
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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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You know, interesting minds usually do hold more than one idea at a time.
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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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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 happen to be a hopeaholic. I tend to look at problems as an opportunity to do some work.
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Perhaps art is a quest for the perfect, or even the imperfect. Reality always falls short on both sides.
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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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You've heard that old expression from Shakespeare, 'Just speak the speech'? The words themselves will take you to the reality of the character. And so this led me to interview people.
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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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My job in my work is not to acquire power it's to question power.
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I don't talk a lot when I interview. My job is to get out of the way.
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We who are in the arts are at the risk of being in a popularity contest rather than a profession. If that fact causes you despair . . . pick another profession. Your desire to communicate must be bigger than your relationship with the chaotic and unfair realities . . . We have to create our own standards of discipline.
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I think some of our most talented people are not going to pick the arts as a way that they're going to spend their lives.
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