Physical Gestures Quotes

Man himself cannot express love and humility by external signs, so plainly as does a dog, when with drooping ears, hanging lips, flexuous body, and wagging tail, he meets his beloved master.

Artists freeze themselves into these weird postures that are meant to be impressive and involving, then they fling them out into the world like Polaroids, and then they move on. And I'm stuck in this intense relationship to the Polaroid.

The man in ecstasy and the man drowning: both raise their arms.

The Europeans look down on raising your hands. They don't like the end-zone dance. I think that's unfortunate. That feeling - the finish line, the last couple of meters - is what motivates me.

The angles of my body show you an awful lot. I started doing coke to feel open, but by that time, the hole had opened so wide that I'd fallen through. The body language in those photos tells you everything.

I watched his fingers clench and unclench, and I wondered if he was dreaming that they were wrapped around my neck.

His hands skim my bare arms. “Just bounce a little when you walk,” he says, kissing my forehead, “and pretend you’re afraid of their guns” —another kiss between my eyebrows— “and act like the shrinking violet you could never be ”—a kiss on my cheek— “and you’ll be fine.

The thing with physical comedy is that you have to actually try to do the thing you're trying to do - you can't fake it.

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.

We are full of rhythms . . . our pulse, our gestures, our digestive tracts, the lunar and seasonal cycles.

Actions are interesting to watch. I learn about the actors. Their movements are emblems of the tensions in this internal landscape, which their actions resolve. About-to-act is an interesting state to experience, because I am conscious of just those tensions. Acting itself feels fairly dull; it not only resolves, it obliterates those tensions from my consciousness. Acting is only interesting as it leads to new tensions that, irrelevantly, cause me to act again.

Even the cerebral characters I play seem to have physical quirks. They're all "physically inhabited," for lack off a better expression. For instance, Sherlock Holmes has very particular physical gestures which are drawn out in such detail.