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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
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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
Afraid
Race
Talk
Seems
Many
Loaded
Every
Inadequate
People
Vocabulary
Emotionally
More quotes by Anna Deavere Smith
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
I mean, I think that - as an actress, in particular, I'm basically a fool, and I see the world upside down.
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You know, interesting minds usually do hold more than one idea at a time.
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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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Artists are the people that no matter what, pick up the pen, pick up a paintbrush. They take the time to translate what is happening to create something that resonates deeply with the rest of the people that are caught in the middle of their own reality.
Anna Deavere Smith
A lot of acting techniques are very self-oriented.
Anna Deavere Smith
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
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.
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If you say a word often enough it becomes you.
Anna Deavere Smith
In my profession, I'm around a lot of people whose bodies are their instruments in one way or another.
Anna Deavere Smith
If you think about what acting is supposed to be, my job is to disappear.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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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
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 if we were to look back and how we were in 1955 living in Jim Crow, living in segregation, living in segregated schools, it's hard to believe that it was America, but it really was.
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
I don't talk a lot when I interview. My job is to get out of the way.
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.
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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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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.
Anna Deavere Smith
