A Quote by Anna Deavere Smith

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.
Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
It is fear which leads us to war, ... It is fear which leads us to believe that we must kill or be killed. Fear which leads us to attack those who have not attacked us. Fear which leads us to ring our nation in the very heavens with weapons of mass destruction.
We naturally assume that our mental structures are universal. But I suppose an outside biologist looking at us would see something very different. He would see that, like other organisms, we have a narrow sphere within which we are very good, but that sphere is very limited. And that, in fact, the very achievements we can have within that sphere are related to lack of achievements in other spheres.
People need to learn how to respond to each other's hatreds with love - which is what Jesus taught us, which is what Buddha came here to teach us, which is what Muhammad taught us, which is what all of the great spiritual masters who have ever walked among us who live at those highest energies taught us - responding to force with more force will just create more problems.
Part of the problem is that we have become so dependent upon this system that is killing and exploiting us, it has become almost impossible for us to imagine living outside of it, and it's very difficult physically for us to live outside of it.
My father was a very powerful influence, well, always, through our life. He taught us very much that... we were very lucky and that we should make a contribution to country, that we were fortunate to live in America.
[Kenneth Koch] taught us to be playful, to be very appreciative of other poets, to appreciate all forms of expression. He taught us to be experimental.
Let us do our duty well; let us go straight to God; let us work to become very humble, very patient, very mortified, and very charitable.
The love of God is not taught. No one has taught us to enjoy the light or to be attached to life more than anything else. And no one has taught us to love the two people who brought us into the world and educated us. Which is all the more reason to believe that we did not learn to love God as a result of outside instruction. In the very nature of every human being has been sown the seed of the ability to love. You and I ought to welcome this seed, cultivate it carefully, nourish it attentively and foster its growth by going to the school of God's commandments with help of His grace.
The road ahead of you is long, dark, and, I very much fear, bloodstained. I also very much fear that you will take us all down that road. But you must live to reach the end of it.
Travelling as extensively as I do... the take away for me has made me very humble and very sympathetic to other people's plight in the world and very desirous of being proactive in being part of a solution somehow and not part of a problem. It's made me very patient and very grateful for where I live.
Someone has said it is better to appreciate the things you don't own than to own things you don't appreciate. I hope we will have with us a spirit of appreciation for all of the good things we enjoy, all the blessings that we have, many of which have come so easy to us, with very little effort on our part, and yet they are very real and very choice and are truly rich blessings.
I always believe that Kar-Wai has a complete script: he just doesn't show it to us. He wants us to experience and explore the character. He gives you a lot of space, and you know every time will be a very long journey. You just live in the character, and that's very different from other directors.
Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.
With 'Honeymoon,' it was so intimate, and we literally shot it in something like 20, 24 days. Everything was very rapid and very fast, and so all of us submerged into the deep end and only really came up for air once we had wrapped.
That part of us that is meant to lead us in life, from which we are meant to lead, and from which we are meant to have guidance. The very thing that compels us to breathe, compels us to find hope in the midst of darkness - that part of us gets buried and overshadowed by fear.
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