Waris Dirie Quotes

In the U.S., women smile more than men. In the U.K., there's no difference between men and women.

The body is a universal language. Because if you spoke French, and I speak English, but I move like this or do certain movements, I can still make you smile and laugh.

I'm a very what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of person, and my family always laughs at me. They're like, 'You have minus-zero poker-face skills. We just have to look at your face and we know what's wrong with you.'

It is a curious thing that when one speaks from the heart it is invariably in the worst of taste.

As we get older, we tend to think it is less OK to be vulnerable and to feel what we feel. It's kind of bull. We all still feel things pretty deeply. It just becomes less socially acceptable to express that.

Laughter is regional: a smile extends over the whole face.

Remember that it is not enough to abstain from lying by word of mouth; for the worst lies are often conveyed by a false look, smile, or act.

I have to be in a relationship where I can say what I feel even if it's wrong - so we can work through it.

Being German, I think we don't really express a lot of things.

A man is more frank and sincere with his emotions than a woman. We girls, I'm afraid, have a tendency to hide our feelings.

I can't censor myself; it's really important for me to say how I feel.

I'm not always going to say things the perfect way, the right way. But I'm going to say how I feel.

Some people are uncomfortable saying what they feel.

We're a pretty open-book family; we kind of lead with our hearts. There's nothing to hide.

At times, I can be vocal about what I think people want to hear as opposed to being vocal about what I really feel.

I always come across like I'm looking serious, but I just don't like smiling. Honestly, obviously I'm different in person.

The most confronting thing you can do is talk about your feelings and open yourself up.

Genuine expressions of emotion rarely persist longer than five seconds and almost never longer than 10. A fixed smile is likely to conceal anger, anxiety, or some other negative emotion.

I prefer to talk about our problems, to be proud of them, in place of trying to hide them. Because you can't. And I prefer to dance, to smile on it, to laugh on it.

There is no time to leave important words unsaid.

I think we can learn a lot about a person in the very moment that language fails them. In the very moment they they have to be more creative than they would have imagined in order to communicate. It's the very moment that they have to dig deeper than the surface to find words, and at the same time, it's a moment when they want to communicate very badly. They're digging deep and projecting out at the same time.

I am getting better at smiling when people expect it.

The idea is that for ten minutes, we forget that we have feelings. And we forget about protecting ourselves or other people and we just say the truth. For ten minutes. And then we can go back to being lame.

Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare.

In my own case, I had to train myself out of that phony smile, which is like a nervous tic on every teenage girl. And this meant that I smiled rarely, for in truth, when it came down to real smiling, I had less to smile about. My 'dream' action for the women's liberation movement: a smile boycott, at which declaration all women would instantly abandon their 'pleasing' smiles, henceforth smiling only when something pleased them.