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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
People
Vocabulary
Emotionally
Afraid
Race
Talk
Seems
Many
Loaded
Every
Inadequate
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My job in my work is not to acquire power it's to question power.
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Commit to finding the true nature of art. Go for that thing no one can teach you.
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For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas.
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I went as far away from home as possible in terms of the development of my imagination.
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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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Making your life is ultimately an extraordinarily creative endeavor.
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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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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.
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People in power have to be careful about what comes out of their mouth. They have to find exactly the right word that can't be attacked.
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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.
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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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Your desire to communicate must be bigger than your relationship with the chaotic and unfair realities.
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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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I call the language of political figures, pundits and administrators the haute couture of language.
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I mean, I think a healthy country is a country where people are healthy physically, and a smart country is a country where people are educated.
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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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Use your time to bathe yourself in the gift. Move your hand across the canvas. Go to museums. Make this into an obsession.
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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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