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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
Many
Loaded
Every
Inadequate
People
Vocabulary
Emotionally
Afraid
Race
Talk
Seems
More quotes by Anna Deavere Smith
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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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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If you say a word often enough it becomes you.
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I see myself first and foremost as a student of expression.
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
Self-esteem does not come from surrounding yourself with people and things that seem to increase your value. Real self-esteem is an integration of an inner-value with things in the world around you.
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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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You know, interesting minds usually do hold more than one idea at a time.
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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
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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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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I am lucky: I have fantastic doctors and a fantastic dentist.
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For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas.
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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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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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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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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.
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I think as a kid I always liked to listen to people. I loved hearing stories.
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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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Learning is a tunnel experience that makes us think more broadly.
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