Anna Deavere Smith Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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When you run the marathon, you run against the distance, not against the other runners and not against the time.
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I've always loved to help people, young people in particular.
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Timidity does not inspire bold acts.
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One of the biggest lessons I've learned during my time on 'Oprah' is that everyone wants to be heard. We all want to have our humanity acknowledged - to have others see us for who we truly are. We all want to know that we are valued, we are heard, we are understood.
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New York is a field of tireless and antagonistic interests undoubtedly fascinating but horribly unreal. Everybody is looking at everybody else a foolish crowd walking on mirrors.
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In Mississippi, you don't admit that you're gay. It's just an awkward thing down South, which is sad.
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My plan was to stay in Canada to make films.
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We must all learn to adjust with our surroundings.
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I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.
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It was a labor of love and they did really well.
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You think, 'You hired me because I'm a creative artist with a vision. Don't try and knock it out of me.'
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Dating is kind of hard. Like dinner or something like that. Like a forced awkward situation is very strange. Especially for me, for some reason.
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I never wanted to be one of those actors with a political agenda.
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Every industry has slack times, and everyone has bad days at work.
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The reality is, if you were fortunate to be born to rich parents, you have a better chance of succeeding in life. And that's wrong.
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Computers let people avoid people, going out to explore. It's so different to just open a website instead of looking at a Picasso in a museum in Paris.
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Everybody told me that if I insisted on doing rockabilly music, I'd never have a chance of selling any records. In fact, I lost count of how many people told me to ditch it all together, in favour, I guess, of sounding like everybody else.
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When you're good at controlling your own emotions, you can disguise your true feelings. When you know what others are feeling, you can tug at their heartstrings and motivate them to act against their own best interests.
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I was on a train of lies. I couldn't jump off.
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The repression of the memory is dependent upon and related to the suppression of feeling, for as long as the feeling persists, the memory remains vivid.
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I found in my whole career the best thing that can happen to you is that you hear what people want.
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Part of my problem as a young writer was that I was too much a New Yorker, always second-guessing the 'market.' I became so discouraged that I decided to write something that would please me alone - that became my sole criterion. And that was when I wrote 'Forgetting Elena,' the first novel I got published.
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Some song ideas absolutely require a kind of rigid discipline, and others require absolute chaotic abandon. The form is only valid if you know how to un-form it. I don't mean to sound like an intellectual here!
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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.
