A Quote by Anna Deavere Smith

I love studying how people are. Not just what they're saying, but how they are, what they're doing. — © Anna Deavere Smith
I love studying how people are. Not just what they're saying, but how they are, what they're doing.
Mother Theresa said it is not how much we give that is important but how much love you put into doing it. So it is not just how many units of housing we create or how good our health care system is, it is that people have someone to eat dinner with and that people have someone to hold their hand when they die. That is what we are called to do and it is the love of Christ. It is relationships.
When people ask me about Cade, how he's doing or how we're doing, I always end up saying, 'Oh he's great, he's a keeper, he's a good one.'
Someone has written, Love is a verb. It requires doing -not just saying and thinking. The test is in what one does, how one acts, for love is conveyed in word and deed.
What I'm trying to do is teach people how to actually get individuals in organizations to do the kinds of things to make a difference. It starts with not just studying the mechanics but really understanding how people operate.
Five-hundred years ago people were saying in manuscripts, "Can you believe these kids today?" They were saying that same phrase everyone says now. No one can believe the youth and what they're doing and how culture is going and how it might fall apart.
I think that's a challenge as believers - how do you demonstrate the gospel? How do you do that? I mean it's easy to talk about it and say 'Oh this is what we are supposed to be doing' and this is the relevance. But how do you do that with your hands instead of your mouth? How do you do it every day, instead of just onstage, how is it enacted? And I feel like that is one of the ways that we can show what we believe, by how we treat people around the world.
If I wasn't doing this, I'd be in school studying political science or socioeconomic something. I love visiting different cultures and finding out how they make up a society.
If the president of the country is not actually saying something, allowing equality to happen, how could you expect to counsel kids not to bully other kids? If they're not seeing that their society sees gay people as equals, how could you tell them what they're doing is wrong? With all this stuff going on, with the "Don't ask, don't tell" and things like that, we are second-class citizens, definitely. It just seems to me that it's hypocritical for us as a culture to say, "Bullying is a terrible thing," when really, they are just reflecting what the society is doing.
It's fun and super exciting to see how other people work, how other people write music, and how other people put things together. To me, it's an endless learning process, and I love doing it because everybody works so completely differently.
We have an open society. No one will come and take me away for saying what I am saying. But they don't have to, if they can control how many people hear it. And that's how they do it.
That doesn't make any sense. Sorry. There's no known way of saying an English sentence in which you begin a sentence with "in" and emphasize it. Get me a jury and show me how you can say "In July" and I'll go down on you. That's just idiotic, if you'll forgive me for saying so. It's just stupid... "In July"; I'd love to know how you emphasize "In" in "In July". Impossible! Meaningless!
Just don't let the hype of what people are saying and how much they love you, y'know, just take the compliment and be thankful that people are complimenting you, but don't let it consume you; don't let your circumstances around you and the way people view you make you act a certain way.
I simply love coming to Chennai. My wife always complains, saying, 'You literally run at the mention of Chennai - I wonder what it is about that place!' I love how everyone is active here 24/7. Even at 5 A.M., there are people going about their day. Also, I love how respectful and polite Chennaiites are.
I love to learn, and I started doing a lot of studying of Spanish-style music and really started getting into it and how it is just a completely different form of guitar playing. It is just like if you started speaking in a different language like Japanese or something. It is something that you have to study and work at a lot.
How people see the world is often a reflection of how they see themselves. If they think that the world is just a cesspool of lies and deceit, then they themselves may be full of lies and deceit. Watch out for those people who are always telling you just how corrupt the rest of the world is. As the saying goes, 'It takes one to know one.'
I'm not studying everything that can go wrong. What I'm studying is how much love there can be, even when everything appears to be going wrong.
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