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I think what I am is a convener I like to convene people around ideas.
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
Convene
Around
Ideas
Think
Thinking
Like
People
More quotes by 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
In my profession, I'm around a lot of people whose bodies are their instruments in one way or another.
Anna Deavere Smith
I never know when somebody's going to knock on the door of my own unconscious in a way that I wouldn't have anticipated.
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
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.
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
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.
Anna Deavere Smith
Commit to finding the true nature of art. Go for that thing no one can teach you.
Anna Deavere Smith
I'm interested when things are upside down - because there are so many possibilities in that one moment. There is a lot that is exposed.
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
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
I have never been in a violent movie or television show.
Anna Deavere Smith
Each person has a literature inside them. But when people lose language, when they have to experiment with putting their thoughts together on the spot-that's what I love most. That's where character lives.
Anna Deavere Smith
Artists are the people that no matter what, pick up the pen, pick up a paintbrush. They take the time to translate what is happening to create something that resonates deeply with the rest of the people that are caught in the middle of their own reality.
Anna Deavere Smith
I am interested in personal stories because that's when people become expressive, spontaneous and heartfelt.
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
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
If you think about what acting is supposed to be, my job is to disappear.
Anna Deavere Smith
For me, first of all, I love people, I love ideas.
Anna Deavere Smith
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
