Anna Deavere Smith Quotes
What my work is, is my approach to it. It's the practice. And my work is about the effort that I make to get there. And I think if there's anything artistic, it's in that middle space.
Quotes to Explore
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When I was a kid, all I ever wanted was to be famous.
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Usually it is uses of words, not words in themselves, that are properly called vague.
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Boating on the lake is one of my favorite summer activities.
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Somebody once told me I shouldn't try to change Hollywood. That isn't my point at all. I don't want Hollywood to change me.
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The lack of a consistent policy from major economies is the main source of volatility.
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Everything was in stark and dreadful contrast with the trivial crises and counterfeit emotions of Hollywood, and I returned to England deeply moved and emotionally worn out.
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I think about death most of the day, every day. We can't escape death, and choosing to ignore it only makes it more scary.
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My journey has been that of a character actor.
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I'm not always angry. In fact, I think I usually go out of my way to try to find roles that don't seem to be like me.
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Too often in our communities many families have not even been aware that certain charities exist; and at the same time, there are many who are willing to volunteer their energy and their resources to help these charities, yet they do not know these charities even exist.
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I left home at 17 and I've been on the road ever since.
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It pretty much defeats the purpose of bedtime reading if you fall asleep before the kids do. And you tend to wake up with a matchbox stuck on the end of your nose and/or a potty on your head.
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People don't slip. Time catches up with them.
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War criminals in the U.S. and Israel are not punished: no international court has the courage to put them on trial.
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There's good and bad in everybody. I wasn't looking for the good, or looking for the bad. This is a man who signed his pact with the devil 20 years ago, and he's learned to live with it. He's tried to protect his family from it.
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I feel like I work on scripts for comedy as well as dramatic stuff the same.
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An English journalist called Michael Viney told me when I was 25, that I would write well if I cared a lot what I was writing about. That worked. I went home that day and wrote about parents not understanding their children as well as we teachers did, and it was published the very next week.
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The Matrix is top secret. There isn't much that can be said right now.
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Barry Bonds in the news. Yesterday Barry Bonds' agent said that Bonds could hit as many as 1,000 home runs. And the agent admitted he's on more drugs than Barry Bonds.
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It was a great time, and I liked the guys. I liked getting up every morning and being a cop.
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We never really see time. We see only clocks. If you say this object moves, what you really mean is that this object is here when the hand of your clock is here, and so on. We say we measure time with clocks, but we see only the hands of the clocks, not time itself. And the hands of a clock are a physical variable like any other. So in a sense we cheat because what we really observe are physical variables as a function of other physical variables, but we represent that as if everything is evolving in time.
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To be thrown onto the stand-up stage is an experience that you cannot fathom until you're actually there, because there's no place to go, and everyone is looking at you and you can't even see them because of the lights. And yet you have to manage to start talking and be funny on top of it.
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What my work is, is my approach to it. It's the practice. And my work is about the effort that I make to get there. And I think if there's anything artistic, it's in that middle space.
