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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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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
Give
Look
Looks
Visions
Giving
Window
Going
Beyond
Good
Vision
People
Hope
Doesn

More quotes by Anna Deavere Smith

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Making your life is ultimately an extraordinarily creative endeavor.
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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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People who are sick, or who have been sick, or have come close to death have a lot to say - and they want you to hear it.
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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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Identity is an assemblage of constellations.
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A lot of acting techniques are very self-oriented.
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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
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My job in my work is not to acquire power it's to question power.
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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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If you say a word often enough it becomes you.
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I happen to be a hopeaholic. I tend to look at problems as an opportunity to do some work.
Anna Deavere Smith
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For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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.
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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Discipline — both mental and physical — is crucial.
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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I went as far away from home as possible in terms of the development of my imagination.
Anna Deavere Smith
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I don't talk a lot when I interview. My job is to get out of the way.
Anna Deavere Smith
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I am not myself I am the potential of myself.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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.
Anna Deavere Smith