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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When you put your characters in a dire situation, they often do things that surprise even you, so you have to go back and revise your original conception of who they are.
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Quality and title have such allurements that hundreds are ready to give up all their own importance, to cringe, to flatter, to look little, and to pall every pleasure in constraint, merely to be among the great, though without the least hopes of improving their understanding or sharing their generosity. They might be happier among their equals.
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I just like being around people, especially nice people, and there are a lot of nice girls on tour.
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Segregation. There was another one. America sees this now but it took a civil rights movement to betray their age. And 50 years ago the U.S. Supreme Court betrayed the age May 17, 1954, Brown vs. Board of Education came down and put the lie to the idea that separate can ever really be equal. Amen to that.
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America has been erased like a blackboard, only to be rebuilt and then erased again. But baseball has marked time while America has rolled by like a procession of steamrollers.
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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.
