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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.

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
Friends
Corner
Actually
Corners
Children
Activity
Made
Teacher
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Loved
Mimicked
Never
Trouble
Goody
People
Went
Mimic
Child
Subversive

More quotes by 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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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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If I do three interviews in a day, I can be exhausted, because the process of hearing everyone requires that I empty out myself. While I'm listening, my own judgments and prejudices certainly come up. But I know I won't get anything unless I get those things out of the way.
Anna Deavere Smith
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If you say a word often enough it becomes you.
Anna Deavere Smith
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Commit to finding the true nature of art. Go for that thing no one can teach you.
Anna Deavere Smith
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I happen to be a hopeaholic. I tend to look at problems as an opportunity to do some work.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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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Perhaps art is a quest for the perfect, or even the imperfect. Reality always falls short on both sides.
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If you think about what acting is supposed to be, my job is to disappear.
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.
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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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You know, real artists, we expose our flaws. We long for intimacy.
Anna Deavere Smith
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I remember from my father's funeral that the minister kept using a metaphor about life of a prism. And I took that away like a cherished image.
Anna Deavere Smith
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When I got out of acting school, I was lucky to have gotten any job at all. A lot of people hiring African American actresses - it was right after 'Roots,' and for society, not me, it was great. Nice richly dark-skinned people was the fashion, and I was not.
Anna Deavere Smith
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You know, interesting minds usually do hold more than one idea at a time.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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.
Anna Deavere Smith
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My main concern is theater, and theater does not reflect or mirror society. It has been stingy and selfish, and it has to do better.
Anna Deavere Smith
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I feel like my work has been my path to freedom from having grown up in a segregated environment.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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
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I am lucky: I have fantastic doctors and a fantastic dentist.
Anna Deavere Smith