David Means Quotes

What is the most interesting thing to people? Other people.

There's as much revealed in the way a person lifts a glass as in what they say about some political issue.

When two people are paying close attention to each other, check out the others in the group and see who's observing. Human dynamics are amazing, but so much that you might learn is subconscious interplay.

When people walk in a room, the way they sit or they talk, that itself tells me a story.

Brains affect brains through far more means than words and listening.

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.

The test of one's behavior pattern is their relationship to society, relationship to work and relationship to sex.

I love studying how people are. Not just what they're saying, but how they are, what they're doing.

One of the ways we interact with other human beings and form social bonds is through touch, and probably most of us are not aware of the extreme importance of touch.

I'm just totally fascinated by people.

Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech.

We routinely participate in elaborate nonverbal exchanges even when we are not consciously aware of doing so.

Gossip. The more you talk about why people do things, the more ideas you have about how the world works.

Yes, people do come across the street to say hi, but as they approach and get near, my perception of space begins to dissolve, and a new interest takes over that is primarily emotional, and with it comes a desire to touch, which may be a human interest, but not the interest of my work.

If somebody would come and they're not playing music, they would encounter certain people on another level.

I was primarily interested in people, and people in action, so that I did nothing photographically in the sense of doing buildings for their own sake or a still life or anything like that.

Americans cannot realize how many chances for mental improvement they lose by their inveterate habit of keeping six conversations when there are twelve in the room.

Thence, I suppose, my natural disposition to make fresh acquaintances, and to break with them so readily, although always for a good reason, and never through mere fickleness.

The moment a man talks to his fellows he begins to lie.

On the other hand, I was very much interested in the way people behaved, the human dance, how they seemed to move around each other. I wanted to play around with that.

What isn't said is as important as what is said.

It is difficult to imagine how any behavior in the presence of another person can avoid being a communication of one's own view of the nature of one's relationship with that person and how it can fail to influence that person.

After my performance 'The Artist is Present (2010)' at MoMA in New York, many scientists became interested in why so many people who sat across from me began to cry. I was incredibly moved by this experience also, and was very curious to know what happens in our brains when we spend time not talking, just looking at one another.

As a species of animal that evolved to make connections and work together, it feels strange to suppress our desire for contact. People enjoy touching each other, and find joy in seeing each other in person - but now we have to keep our physical distance.

All animals communicate. What's special about gossip is that it's not about the here and now. You don't gossip about lions. You don't gossip about clouds. You only gossip about other people. And once you do, you can keep track of many more people - this is the basis for forming larger communities.