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Identity is an assemblage of constellations.
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
Identity
Assemblage
Constellations
Individuality
More quotes by Anna Deavere Smith
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.
Anna Deavere Smith
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
I don't talk a lot when I interview. My job is to get out of the way.
Anna Deavere Smith
When I was a kid, my grandfather said that if you say a word often enough, it becomes you. Thinking of that later in life gave me this idea that I could try to become America by learning the words of people from many aspects of the country.
Anna Deavere Smith
Your desire to communicate must be bigger than your relationship with the chaotic and unfair realities.
Anna Deavere Smith
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
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
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.
Anna Deavere Smith
I have never been in a violent movie or television show.
Anna Deavere Smith
President Obama called for a 'we' nation in his Inauguration Address. Art convenes. It is not just inspirational. It is aspirational. It pricks the walls of our compartmentalized minds, opens our hearts and makes us brave. And that's what we need most in our country today.
Anna Deavere Smith
I think it's really important to give yourself a very big question that you're working on that you can come home to.
Anna Deavere Smith
Discipline — both mental and physical — is crucial.
Anna Deavere Smith
My job in my work is not to acquire power it's to question power.
Anna Deavere Smith
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.
Anna Deavere Smith
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
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
I think what I am is a convener I like to convene people around ideas.
Anna Deavere Smith
Many people are afraid to talk about race because it's so emotionally loaded. We don't have the vocabulary to talk about it. Every day, our vocabulary seems more and more inadequate.
Anna Deavere Smith
Making your life is ultimately an extraordinarily creative endeavor.
Anna Deavere Smith
I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment.
Anna Deavere Smith