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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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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
Keep
Margins
Trying
Outsiders
Always
Frequently
Center
Distance
Tradition
Name
Names

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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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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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Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.
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I am interested in personal stories because that's when people become expressive, spontaneous and heartfelt.
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I have never been in a violent movie or television show.
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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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I think that art is supposed to be ahead of the times.
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Poverty makes it very difficult in an already competitive world for kids to get on a straight track where they can actually love learning.
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I am not myself I am the potential of myself.
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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.
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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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Each person has a literature inside them.
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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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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.
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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 see myself first and foremost as a student of expression.
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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.
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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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Suddenly in high school, I'm in a predominantly Jewish atmosphere. Jewish people were my gate to white America.
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