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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It's tough to be 68 and dating. I've given it up now.
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We must all learn to adjust with our surroundings.
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I'm the Chris Martin of hip-hop.
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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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A democracy thrives on diversity. Tyranny oppresses it.
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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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Whenever I hear that I'm on the brink of stardom, I feel like I want to run into a cave.
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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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My first time coming over to North America was to New York around Christmastime when I was 7. My mom was a flight attendant, and she got put on to the Trans-Atlantic route over Christmastime, so she brought the whole family.
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A lot of people have said my movies are all the same. But I don't actually make an effort to have a style. I'm usually just thinking of what can we do to make it funnier or more interesting or just kind of refine it and it ends up like that.
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As soon as you become afraid to make a fool of yourself, you're in trouble. I decided I may as well just see if I can live with myself making millions of mistakes and learn something from it.
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The people at home will work hard and actually all of them think it was important that we hade the decision that we did make not to compromise; because we didn't have anything to compromise for.
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When you have an American mother from the Midwest and an Egyptian father, you travel back and forth and see such completely different stories in the news about the exact same events. It makes you think, 'How is anybody able to understand or even have a dialogue when the basis of information is just so completely different?'
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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.
