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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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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
Thinking
Liked
People
Hearing
Listen
Loved
Kids
Stories
Always
Think
More quotes by Anna Deavere Smith
Each person has a literature inside them.
Anna Deavere Smith
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
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
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 call the language of political figures, pundits and administrators the haute couture of language.
Anna Deavere Smith
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
Commit to finding the true nature of art. Go for that thing no one can teach you.
Anna Deavere Smith
For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas.
Anna Deavere Smith
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
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
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
I don't talk a lot when I interview. My job is to get out of the way.
Anna Deavere Smith
I have a lot of optimism about new doctors because I think it's really clear that it's a lot of hard work and no guarantee of a lot of money.
Anna Deavere Smith
Learning is a tunnel experience that makes us think more broadly.
Anna Deavere Smith
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
Making your life is ultimately an extraordinarily creative endeavor.
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 am interested in personal stories because that's when people become expressive, spontaneous and heartfelt.
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
