Quote

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

More quotes by 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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Even jealousy is based on fantasies: a fantasy that someone else has what belongs to you.
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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Your desire to communicate must be bigger than your relationship with the chaotic and unfair realities.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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
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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
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I call the language of political figures, pundits and administrators the haute couture of language.
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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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.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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.
Anna Deavere Smith
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Discipline — both mental and physical — is crucial.
Anna Deavere Smith
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I think that art is supposed to be ahead of the times.
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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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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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
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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.
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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I am interested in personal stories because that's when people become expressive, spontaneous and heartfelt.
Anna Deavere Smith
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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