Alan J. Pakula Quotes

% of what you understand in a conversation is read through the body, not the words.

There is a proverb that says, ‘Talk so that I may know who you are.’ But I say, ‘Show me your eyes and I will know who you are.

You learn to control every aspect of your muscles, your face, your toes, your fingernails. And that is how you tell a story, through movement.

When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.

Don't write anything you can phone. Don't phone anything you can talk. Don't talk anything you can whisper. Don't whisper anything you can smile. Don't smile anything you can nod. Don't nod anything you can wink.

You can convey a lot of emotion with just some eyebrows and mouth movement.

When you perform, you can convey emotions differently, and your look can reflect each of those emotions.

I like my hands. They do most of the talking.

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression - all of that is very important.

Nonverbal communication forms a social language that is in many ways richer and more fundamental than our words.

There's a lot you can do without words.

I like to use my hands. When I was in theatre in college, that was one of my biggest notes: 'You use your hands too much.'

Modeling is really silent acting.

Gestures matter.

I think there's a great deal of information you can convey with looks or silence.

I think you can actually express a lot more in ways without words.

Body language is more fascinating to me than actual language.

There's this little recipe that you have to hit pretty well to get somebody to laugh. And it's a combination of the way in which you say something, with the facial expression that you have, married with the body language that you have, etc.

In theater, the primary tool for me was voice. On-screen, it's the eyes.

I don't think people are going to talk in the future. They're going to communicate through eye contact, body language, emojis, signs.

I give a facial expression in a moment of silence for audiences to react to what I just said and kind of let that marinate with the audience for a little bit. I enjoy the physical part of the comedy as much as the verbal content. People tend to gravitate to not only what they're hearing but also what they're seeing.

I've always really been interested in observing people's postures, the way they speak with their hands, the way they communicate things with their body language.

I use my hands a lot while acting.

Oceans of emotion can be transmitted through a text message, an emoji sequence, and a winking semicolon, but humans are hardwired to respond to visuals.

Body language and tone of voice - not words - are our most powerful assessment tools.