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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

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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
Think
Working
Thinking
Bigs
Give
Home
Come
Giving
Important
Importance
Really
Question

More quotes by Anna Deavere Smith

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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
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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
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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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My work is about giving voice to the unheard, and reiterating the voice of the heard in such a way that you question, or re-examine, what is the truth.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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.
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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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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Identity is an assemblage of constellations.
Anna Deavere Smith
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Each person has a literature inside them.
Anna Deavere Smith
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I think as a kid I always liked to listen to people. I loved hearing stories.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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
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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.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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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Suddenly in high school, I'm in a predominantly Jewish atmosphere. Jewish people were my gate to white America.
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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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
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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.
Anna Deavere Smith
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I love studying how people are. Not just what they're saying, but how they are, what they're doing.
Anna Deavere Smith