Peggy Noonan Quotes

It's a very performative thing, grief. As with so much in modern life, I think there's a whole performative layer to what we do because we feel like there's a private TV show viewing our lives.

Applause should be an emotional response to the music, rather than a regulated social duty.

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

Poetry is a mock of a cry at finding a million dollars and a mock of a laugh at losing it.

If you have no tragedy, you have no comedy. Crying and laughing are the same emotion. If you laugh too hard, you cry. And vice versa.

But smiles and tears are so alike with me, they are neither of them confined to any particular feelings: I often cry when I am happy, and smile when I am sad.

When I get a very generous introduction like that I explain that I'm emotionally moved, but on the other hand I'm Irish and the Irish are very emotionally moved. My mother is Irish and she cries during beer commercials.

The emotion is the execution of a very complex program of actions. Some actions that are actually movements, like movement that you can do, change your face for example, in fear, or movements that are internal, that happen in your heart or in your gut, and movements that are actually not muscular movements, but rather, releases of molecules.

A laugh is the loud echo of a sigh; a sigh the faint echo of a laugh.

When matters are desperate we must put on a desperate face.

We live in an age of prejudice, dissimulation and paradox, wherein, like dry leaves caught in a whirlpool, some of us are tossed helpless . . . ever struggling between our honest convictions and fear of that cruelest of tyrants -- PUBLIC OPINION.

I am deeply sensitive to the spell of nationalism. I can play about thirty Bohemian folk songs ... on my mouth-organ. My oldest friend, who is Czech and a patriot, cannot bear to hear me play them because he says I do it in such a schmalzy way, 'crying into the mouth organ'. I do not think I could have written the book on nationalism which I did write, were I not capable of crying, with the help of a little alcohol, over folk songs, which happen to be my favourite form of music.

In these days the young folks is all copy-cats, 'fraid to death they won't be all just alike; as for the old folks, they pray for the advantage o' bein' a little different.

There were people I know that got upset that I kiss people. I kiss them for luck and love, that's all. That's what my mother did to me.

Precision marching is less important for the bridal party than maintaining the proper facial expresssions: The bridegroom must look awed; the bridesmaids, happy and excited; the father of the bride, proud; and the bride, demure. If the bridegroom feels doubtful, the bridesmaids, sulky, the father, worried, and the bride, blasé, nobody wants to know.

There is something about fashion that can make people really nervous.

Sam?" Rachel asked. "Do you know you have the saddest sad face ever?

It's hard when I get to the end of the movie and am held hostage and am supposed to be very upset and the funniest things I've ever heard in my life are coming out. All I can do is pretend there's something really important behind me to hide my face from it.

There are few faces that can afford to smile: a smile is sometimes bewitching, in general vapid, often a contortion.

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

The human heart is a strange vessel. Love and hatred can exist side by side.

You have the opposite of poker face. You have like.. miniature golf face.

Just as we are often moved to merriment for no other reason than that the occasion calls for seriousness, so we are correspondingly serious when invited too freely to be amused.

To seem sorrowful is not in good taste: You're supposed to seem bored.

Her smile steps offstage for a moment, then does an encore, all while I'm dealing with my blushing face.