Dave Barry Quotes

You can almost read any emotion through someone's eyes.

One of the sad things about contemporary journalism is that it actually matters very little. The world now is almost inured to the power of journalism. The best journalism would manage to outrage people. And people are less and less inclined to outrage.

Where words are restrained, the eyes often talk a great deal.

You must never underestimate the power of the eyebrow.

The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if it were.

I read the papers like everybody else, so I don't complain about what they print.

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

When the people perceive that the print media is reporting what they believe is correct, then they tend to read the print media and to follow news on the television.

I don't think we treat people very well in the media, both as customers - and I call them customers - of newspapers and magazines, or TV news, and we don't understand that the greatest story that we could tell, each and every day, is the story of the people around us.

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 move my face so much, because I'm very much expressive.

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

An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or it can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance for joy. ... One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye; it transcends speech; it is the bodily symbol of identity.

For example, if ears are back on a horse, it's obviously not very happy. And the eyes show that it's not happy. Now, if the eyes are nice and soft and brown, then it's calm. You can see these things in horses and cattle, and I think that some of these people are just really good at picking up these signals, but they don't realize it.

The language of the face is not taught by the schools; it is intuitive, and to the observant is always legible.

He had a lot of different smiles, and Jane was getting to know them all.

Acting, in general, is something most people think they're incapable of, but they do it from morning to night. The subtlest acting I've ever seen is by ordinary people trying to show they feel something they don't, or trying to hide something. It's something everyone learns at an early age.

She looks honestly upset, but then, I’ve learned that I can’t read her. The problem with a really excellent liar is that you have to just assume they’re always lying.

I am getting better at smiling when people expect it.

The eyelids confess, and reject, and refuse to reject. They have expressed all things ever since man was man. And they express so much by seeming to hide or to reveal that which indeed expresses nothing. For there is no message from the eye. It has direction, it moves, in the service of the sense of sight; it receives the messages of the world. But expression is outward, and the eye has it not. There are no windows of the soul, there are only curtains.

Most of us do not use speech to express thought. We use it to express feelings.

You can't rely on your face or body to convey emotion.

I just think we as consumers of information media must be very clear what it is we are consuming. Whether we are choosing to get our information by listening to people fight about it. Or whether we're choosing to get it by listening to the facts or watching the facts as they're laid out and then reaching our own conclusions. It's very different ways of info gathering, but it's not all journalism.

You could slap his wrist for saying it, but then he said it with his face, and you could spank him for making faces, but then he said it with his eyes, and there were limits to correction-no way, in the end, to penetrate behind the blue irises and eradicate a boy's disgust.

In the hours that followed, I learned that Ademic hand gestures did not actually represent facial expressions. It was nothing so simple as that. For example a smile can mean you're amused, happy, grateful, or satisfied. You can smile to comfort someone. You can smile because you're content or because you're in love. A grimace or a grin look similar to a smile, but they mean entirely different things. Imagine trying to teach someone how to smile. Imagine trying to describe what different smiles mean and when, precisely, to use them in conversation. It's harder than learning to walk.