Judith Martin Quotes

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

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.

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.

Bridesmaids are never going to upstage the bride.

It's ironic - people used to want to suspend me and talk about how bad my behaviour was, but now they like it when I shout and scream.

I just love human emotion and faces.

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

Though I am associated in the public mind with glamorous songs and dances, my appearance in 'Company' is in no way glamorous. Rather than rely on my body language, the number zooms in on my facial expressions.

My emotions kind of shine through my face, so whatever I'm thinking is what I'm portraying as well.

I don't have a poker face at all - I have a very, very expressional face, and I have no control over that.

People call me the human emoji because I think people recognize that if I'm ever thinking something or feeling a certain emotion, it goes straight to my face. So if I'm happy, you'll know I'm happy, and if I'm mad, you'll know I'm mad just by looking at me.

When I'm away from the field, I show a little more emotion and stuff.

Even when you look at, like, movies with some of our famous celebrities, they don't really cry and bring out their tears until, like, forced.

I have these big brown eyes, so ever since I was a baby, you could tell what I was feeling and thinking based on my eyes.

Crying does not equal good acting.

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.

Before taking the stage, Paul Ryan spent 6 hours staring into a mirror working on 'concerned eyebrow.'

All my muscles are in my face. I have a very muscular face. I'm good with faces. I always have been.

I am getting better at smiling when people expect it.

Angelina Jolie seems like she cries a lot, which puts me off.

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.

...one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly developing picture.

Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same.

The Irish are often nervous about having the appropriate face for the occasion. They have to be happy at weddings, which is a strain, so they get depressed; they have to be sad at funerals, which is easy, so they get happy.

Few animals display their mood via facial expressions as distinctly as cats.