Anna Deavere Smith Quotes
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My work is about giving voice to the unheard, and reiterating the voice of the heard in such a way that you question, or re-examine, what is the truth.
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Somehow we can't live outside the politics of race. There's something very deep in all of us, that is taught to us when we are very, very little. Which is the disrespect and fear of the other.
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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.
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I think as a kid I always liked to listen to people. I loved hearing stories.
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I see myself first and foremost as a student of expression.
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Many people are afraid to talk about race because it's so emotionally loaded. We don't have the vocabulary to talk about it. Every day, our vocabulary seems more and more inadequate.
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Racism has been for everyone like a horrible, tragic car crash, and we've all been heavily sedated from it. If we don't come into consciousness of this tragedy, there's going to be a violent awakening we don't want. The question is, can we wake up?
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In my own life I'm frequently in predominantly white atmospheres.
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There's not a lot of flash about me.
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I think some of our most talented people are not going to pick the arts as a way that they're going to spend their lives.
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You know if we were to look back and how we were in 1955 living in Jim Crow, living in segregation, living in segregated schools, it's hard to believe that it was America, but it really was.
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I made a real specific decision when I came out of school and most artists were writing about home - if you were a woman, you were writing about being a woman - and I decided not to do that, write about what you know. That's not what I do. I went as far away from home as possible in terms of the development of my imagination.
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I would love to have been a documentary filmmaker; I just didn't have the resources to do that.
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When you think about it, words can break your heart, or they can change your day.
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I am lucky: I have fantastic doctors and a fantastic dentist.
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I am interested in personal stories because that's when people become expressive, spontaneous and heartfelt.
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I love studying how people are. Not just what they're saying, but how they are, what they're doing.
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Learning is a tunnel experience that makes us think more broadly.
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Not that many people, even contemporary writers, write about right now.
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You know, real artists, we expose our flaws. We long for intimacy.