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Be more than ready. Be present in your discipline. Remember your gift. Be grateful for your gift and treat it like a gift. Cherish it, take care of it, and pass it on.
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
Ready
Cherish
Present
Preparation
Remember
Treat
Care
Treats
Take
Pass
Like
Grateful
Gift
Discipline
More quotes by 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
Movies, as evidenced by a chorus of protesting and celebrating Americans, influence broader trends.
Anna Deavere Smith
Confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition.
Anna Deavere Smith
Perhaps art is a quest for the perfect, or even the imperfect. Reality always falls short on both sides.
Anna Deavere Smith
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?
Anna Deavere Smith
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
I think that art is supposed to be ahead of the times.
Anna Deavere Smith
I would love to have been a documentary filmmaker I just didn't have the resources to do that.
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 don't talk a lot when I interview. My job is to get out of the way.
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
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
Probably the person who said the only color in Los Angeles is green was right.
Anna Deavere Smith
I think what I am is a convener I like to convene people around ideas.
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.
Anna Deavere Smith
I happen to be a hopeaholic. I tend to look at problems as an opportunity to do some work.
Anna Deavere Smith
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.
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
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
I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment.
Anna Deavere Smith
