John Cage Quotes

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

I never knew anybody . . . who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details.

How truly language must be regarded as a hindrance to thought, though the necessary instrument of it, we shall clearly perceive on remembering the comparative force with which simple ideas are communicated by signs. To say, "Leave the room," is less expressive than to point to the door. Place a finger on the lips is more forcible than whispering, "Do not speak." A beck of the hand is better than, "Come here." No phrase can convey the idea of surprise so vividly as opening the eyes and raising the eyebrows. A shrug of the shoulders would lose much by translation into words.

The best clue to what a person thinks is what he says.

With public speaking, practicing congruence is very helpful - allowing the words to be expressed with the face and body. It helps to think of simply "turning up the nonverbal volume."

Grown-up people do very little and say a great deal.... Toddlers say very little and do a great deal.... With a toddler you cannot explain, you have to show. You cannot send, you have to take. You cannot control with words, you have to use your body.

I hear from so many women who really started to pay attention to it at all times and stopped, you know, touching their faces and necks and playing with their hair and twisting their legs. I think women become more aware of it when they learn about this stuff, and you see their body language change.

It seemed really easy waving your hands around, it wouldn't make any difference if you were moving it left or right, but I wanted to do it realistically. I think you can tell if someone doesn't know what they're doing.

In such business Action is eloquence, and the eyes of th’ ignorant More learned than the ears.

I've no use for talking, would just as soon store paper clips in my mouth.

You don't always talk with your mouth. Sometimes what you say with your mouth hardly matters at all. You have to signify

All it means is that, while our minds may have trouble communicating, our bodies don't have any problem at all." "I don't think it's that simple." "Sure it is." "The earth moved," she said softly. "That has to be more than bodies communicating.

The gesture is the thing truly expressive of the individual - as we think so will we act.

Good or bad is a matter of perspective. I met an immortal hunami once, a man called William Shakespeare, who wrote that there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

A stare is really nothing more than what you're thinking inside.

I love watching people listen. And on film often some of the best moments if you think about favorite moments on film, often the person isn't even talking.

You have to communicate on a much greater scale. With a camera, you can use the flick of an eye. On stage, a lot of other things are happening that can pull focus or energy. You're always thinking the same way, but you have to amplify your thoughts with the volume of your speech and the ways you use your whole body to communicate what you're feeling. It's a little bit different from film.

You don't need to be told some things. You can sometimes tell more by a man's silence and the set of his head than by what he says.

Finding the physical aspect is important to me because that is often how we read people in everyday life.

Before I could stop myself, I punched his arm. “Careful,” he said in a low voice. “They might think we’re flirting.

The physical language of the body is so much more powerful than words.

If I'm doing some weird tick with my mouth, or not standing still or something, I'll be the first person to notice it, and then want to change that. I think it's important just to maintain trajectory, to not just use your same tricks over and over.

Because beyond their practical function, all gestures have a meaning that exceeds the intention of those who make them; when people in bathing suits fling themselves into the water, it is joy itself that shows in the gesture, notwithstanding any sadness the divers may actually feel. When someone jumps into the water fully clothed, it is another thing entirely: the only person who jumps into the water fully clothed is a person trying to drown; and a person trying to drown does not dive headfirst; he lets himself fall: thus speaks the immemorial language of gestures.

when someone speaks he looks at a mouth, not eyes and their colors, which, it seems to him, will always alter depending on the light of a room, the minute of the day. Mouths reveal insecurity or smugness or any other point on the spectrum of character. For him they are the most intricate aspect of faces. He's never sure what an eye reveals. but he can read how mouths darken into callousness, suggest tenderness. One can often misjudge an eye from its reaction to a simple beam of sunlight.

Peeta looks me right in the eye and gives my hand what I think is meant to be a reassuring squeeze. Maybe it's just a nervous spasm.