Anna Deavere Smith Quotes

You hang around actors, or dancers, the minute you sneeze, everybody has a remedy, and we're all on a million different kinds of diets, and different kinds of things that we do for exercise.

Anna Deavere Smith

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Quotes to Explore

• A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state.

  

  Walter Lippmann
  • Life
  • Long
  • Space

• The first thing I tried to do in the months after losing my mother was to write a poem. I found myself turning to poetry in the way so many people do - to make sense of losses. And I wrote pretty bad poems about it. But it did feel that the poem was the only place that could hold this grief.

  

  Natasha Trethewey
  • People
  • Bad
  • Mother

• Always render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.

  

  Og Mandino
  • May
  • Service
  • Better

• The kindest word to describe my performance in school was Sloth.

  

  Harrison Ford
  • School
  • Word
  • Performance

• I now believe that major labels can only work with people who care more about fame and money than the quality of the art they produce.

  

  Malcolm Wilson
  • People
  • Work
  • Believe

• The reason a poet is a poet is to write poems, not to advertise himself as a poet.

  

  Yehuda Amichai
  • Reason
  • Poet
  • Himself

• At the end of the day, you can't have a vision; you have to have a hope. This is where the miracle comes in.

  

  Dan Colen
  • Hope
  • Day
  • Vision

• No person, not even a congressman, is above the law.

  

  Dana Boente
  • Law
  • Person
  • Above

• Wise is he who enjoys the show offered by the world.

  

  Fernando Pessoa
  • World
  • Wise
  • Show

• I think the reason they cast me as the good girls is because they couldn't find any in Hollywood.

  

  Victoria Jackson
  • Good
  • Think
  • Reason

• If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.

  

  Saint Augustine
  • Believe
  • You
  • Yourself

• Whatever requires an undue amount of thought or trouble or involves a large expenditure of effort and causes our whole life to revolve, as it were, around solicitude for the flesh must be avoided by Christians.

  

  Saint Basil
  • Life
  • Effort
  • Thought

• I talk in subjects and verbs, and sort of wind around in concentric circles until I get far enough away from the beginning so that I can call it the end, and it ends.

  

  Garrison Keillor
  • Beginning
  • End
  • Wind

• As an actor, I think you should always disappear a little. I act in order to lose myself.

  

  Vincent Cassel
  • Think
  • Myself
  • Lose

• I have a knack for choosing the wrong people.

  

  Kangana Ranaut
  • People
  • Wrong
  • Choosing

• The strips about the military do seem to provoke moving and thoughtful responses. It's nice when the strip resonates, but more importantly, I need to know when I'm getting something wrong. The last thing I want to do is contribute to the suffering that wounded warriors already endure.

  

  Garry Trudeau
  • Want
  • Nice
  • Moving

• I have to entertain, because if I don't entertain you, you're not going to continue reading. But if I'm not out to enlighten, or change your mind about something, or change your behavior, then I really don't want to take the journey.

  

  Bebe Moore Campbell
  • Mind
  • Change
  • Reading

• I like to write in a shroud of secrecy because I have to keep finding ways to scare myself.

  

  M. Night Shyamalan
  • Myself
  • Finding
  • Secrecy

• I've been very fortunate - You only can do what you're offered, you know?

  

  Jon Voight

• Profound questions regarding the purpose of life have led many individuals and families throughout the world to search for truth. Often that search has led them to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and to the restored gospel.

  

  Dieter F. Uchtdorf
  • Life
  • World
  • Truth

• I want to get better as an actor, to keep trying to work harder, trying to discover something different. In some ways, it's a pretty frightening experience. But normally, I do tend to walk against fear and hope that I'll be able to survive.

  

  Forest Whitaker
  • Work
  • Different
  • Trying

• Age, style, where you come from, where you were born, it's different every time, which, to me, is refreshing because it says that there isn't any one thing, one formula or kind of character that makes a great comedian. Everybody has had a different approach.

  

  Alan King
  • Time
  • Great
  • Different

• Most of the results of using technical bugging devices were of little importance for my service. It may have been different in counter-intelligence, where bugs in flats, etc., were used to obtain a lot of information about what counter-intelligence was interested in.

  

  Markus Wolf
  • Different
  • May
  • Service

• You hang around actors, or dancers, the minute you sneeze, everybody has a remedy, and we're all on a million different kinds of diets, and different kinds of things that we do for exercise.

  

  Anna Deavere Smith
  • Different
  • Exercise