Face Gestures Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes I thought it was a good thing that he had gone blind, because that way he would never see me, never see my face, never see the look on my face when I was with him, which wasn't the look of a prostitute or a thief or a spy, but an expectant look, the look of someone hoping for anything and everything, from a kind word to a life-changing declaration.
There weren't many kind words, because Maciste didn't talk much, but there were kind gestures. And there were no life-changing declarations, or at least none I recognized at the time, though since then I've come to remember each of Maciste's words as a key or a dark bridge that surely could have led me elsewhere, as if he were a fortune-telling machine designed exclusively for me, which I know isn't true, though sometimes I like to think so, not often, because I don't lie to myself the way I used to, but every once in a while. — Roberto Bolano

I became disenchanted. My first impression, that of finding myself part of a fearless battle, passed. The trepidation at every exam and the joy of passing it with the highest marks had faded. Gone was the pleasure of re-educating my voice, my gestures, my way of dressing and walking, as if I were competing for the prize of best disguise, the mask worn so well that it was almost a face. — Elena Ferrante

The event that will light the way for immigration in North America is the talking picture. The silent film brings nothing but entertainment - a pie in the face, a fop being dragged by a bear out of a department store - all events governed by fate and timing, not language and argument. The tramp never changes the opinion of the policeman. The truncheon swings, the tramp scuttles through a corner window and disturbs the fat lady's ablutions. These comedies are nightmares. The audience emits horrified laughter as Chaplin, blindfolded, rollerskates near the edge of the unbalconied mezzanine. No one shouts to warn him. He cannot talk or listen. North America is still without language, gestures and work and bloodlines are the only currency. — Michael Ondaatje

Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye
corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried wire spiderweb,
leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear — Allen Ginsberg

There, conspicuous in the light of the conflagration, lay the dead body of a woman - the white face turned upward, the hands thrown out and clutched full of grass, the clothing deranged, the long dark hair in tangles and full of clotted blood. The greater part of the forehead was torn away, and from the jagged hole the brain protruded, overflowing the temple, a frothy mass of gray, crowned with clusters of crimson bubbles - the work of a shell.
The child moved his little hands, making wild, uncertain gestures. He uttered a series of inarticulate and indescribable cries - something between the chattering of an ape and the gobbling of a turkey - a startling, soulless, unholy sound, the language of a devil. The child was a deaf mute.
Then he stood motionless, with quivering lips, looking down upon the wreck. — Ambrose Bierce

Her marble tears run down her marble face.
A stranger is someone who has no handkerchief.

Who has no words to say.

Whose shadow mind is burning
as he sits watching her hands
and thinks how rare!

to see a Roman
talk
with no gestures at all. — Anne Carson

Affective gestures pointing to things near either in time or space should be made with the hand not very far from the body of the person pointing; and if these things are distant, the hand of the painter should be more extended and the face turned toward the person to whom he is addressing the demonstration. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Jonnie Goodboy Tyler. Conqueror of Psychlos.' Brown Limper spat on the bill.
He suddenly seized the bill and tore it frantically into little pieces.
Then he threw the pieces around with angry gestures.
After that he gathered them all up again and, with a set, malevolent expression on his face, burned them.
Then he pulverized the ashes with his fist. But somebody came in soon after and said with a delighted smile, "Have you seen the new bank note?" And waved one!
Brown Limper rushed out of the room and found a place to vomit. — L. Ron Hubbard

When you're doing voice work, you're in a bubble where you just think about the story and the words. They record you on video while you're doing the voice work, so they capture how your face is moving and the gestures you make. — Christina Hendricks

What had gone completely was the memory of what made her human, her ways and her thoughts. The withholding of these details was like a torment. When he tried to bring her back to mind, he could not hear the voice, he could not imagine one aspect of her, the way she looked or talked, the expressions of her face, her walk, her gestures. It was as though she were dead and he bore the responsibility for killing her. — Sebastian Faulks

A man who knows the court is master of his gestures, of his eyes and of his face; he is profound, impenetratable; he dissimulates bad offices, smiles at his enemies, controls his irritation, disguises his passions, belies his heartm speaks and acts against his feelings. — Jean De La Bruyere

I see Dr. Johnston at the end of the hall, walking toward us. He stops talking to the other doctors and gestures for me to wait. He holds up his hand: Stop. His face is eager yet unsmiling. I look in the other direction then back at him. His steps quicken, and I squint, for some reason pretending I don't recognize him. And I think: What if I'm wrong? What if Joanie doesn't make it out of this?
"Scottie," I say. "This way."
I walk in the other direction, away from Dr. Johnston, and she turns and follows me.
"Walk quickly," I tell her.
"Why?"
"It's a game. Let's race. Walk fast. Run."She takes off, her backpack jiggling on her back, and I follow her, walking quickly then breaking into a slow jog, and because Dr. Johnston is my friend's dad and was a friend of my father's, I feel like I'm fourteen again, running from the patriarchs. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

The idea which man forms of beauty imprints itself throughout his attire, rumples or stiffens his garments, rounds off or aligns his gestures, and, finally, even subtly penetrates the features of his face. — Charles Baudelaire

... For love it is never the same. What goes on inside is never the same just like this music which changes every instant. For love there are a million variations, a million nights, a million days, contrasts in moods, in textures, whims, a million gestures colored by emotion, by sorrow, joy, fear, courage, triumph, by revelations which deepen the groove, creations which expand its dimensions, sharpen its penetrations. Love is vast enough to include a phrase read in a book, the shape of a neck seen and desired in a crowd, a face loved and desired, seen in the window of a passing subway, vast enough to include a past love, a future love, a film, a voyage, a scene in a dream, an hallucination, a vision. Love-making under a tent, or under a tree, with or without a cover, under a shower, in darkness or in light, in heat or cold. — Anais Nin

Demetrious was studying Law on the Open University and was, in all ways, a ray of sunshine into her life: warm and glorious, achingly temporary. He lived just off the high street with his boyfriend Rob, who worked in the City, doing something neither Demi nor Sukie pretended to understand.
"All the cute guys are gay," Sukie had laughed, that first day, holding her coffee mug high to her face to hide her genuine disappointment. Demi had just tilted his head and looked at her playfully, an expression she would get to know well.
"I'm not gay," he had clarified, matter-of-factly.
"Living with a boyfriend called Rob doesn't sound very straight!" Sukie had pointed out.
"Labels!" Demi had scorned, with one of his characteristic and very Greek hand gestures. "I fall in love with the person, not the gender. — Erin Lawless

When he is away from her, he tries to conjure up her face. He closes his eyes, but the magic eludes him. When they are together he watches, learning her features, her gestures. Still, afterwards, he cannot make it happen. It is as though when she does she takes everything of herself with her. — Aminatta Forna

Are you kidding?" I stop in the middle of the kitchen. Spin around. My face is pulled together in disbelief. "You've spoken to me maybe once in the two weeks I've been here. I hardly even notice you anymore."

"Okay, hold up," he says, turning to block my path. "We both know there's no way you haven't noticed all of this" - he gestures to himself - "so if you're trying to play games with me, I should let you know up front that it's not going to work."

"What?" I frown. "What are you talking abou - "

"You can't play hard to get, kid." He raises an eyebrow. "I can't even touch you. Takes 'hard to get' to a whole new level, if you know what I mean."

"Oh my God," I mouth, eyes closed, shaking my head. "You are insane."

He falls to his knees. "Insane for your sweet, sweet love! — Tahereh Mafi

He was not as soft as when I'd first met him, not as young, but the angles of his face, his quick gestures, the way he sucked in his lower lip to think before going on - I was in love with all of it. — Maggie Stiefvater

Beside me, Molly rolled her shoulders in a few jerky motions and pushed at her hair in fitful little gestures. She tugged at her well-tattered skirts, and grimaced at her boots. "Can you see if there's any mud on them?"
I paused to consider her for a second. Then I said, "You have two tattoos showing right now, and you probably used a fake ID to get them. Your piercings would set off any metal detector worth the name, and you're featuring them in parts of your anatomy your parents wish you didn't yet realize you had. You're dressed like Frankenhooker, and your hair has been dyed colors I previously thought existed only in cotton candy." I turned to face the door again. "I wouldn't waste time worrying about a little mud on the boots. — Jim Butcher

The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit made permanent. Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii, like the metamorphosis of a nymph into a tree, has arrested us in an accustomed movement. — Marcel Proust

I walk along a street and see in the faces of the passersby not the expression they really have but the expression they would have for me if they knew about my life and how I am, if I carried, transparent in my gestures and my face, the ridiculous, timid abnormality of my soul. — Fernando Pessoa

Every word, every gesture is now loaded with ambiguity, nothing can be taken at face value. We speak to each other from a safe distance, pretending all the years we soaped each other's backs and pissed in front of each other never happened. We don't use any of the baby talk, code words, or short hand gestures that had been our language of intimacy, the proof that we belonged to each other. — Amy Tan

I was a prisoner inside my own body. I felt desperate, angry, stupid, confused, ashamed, hopeless and absolutely alone... and that this was of my own making. I could speak at home, how come I couldn't outside it? I have never been able to find the right words to describe what it was like. Imagine that for one day you are unable to speak to anyone you meet outside your own family, particularly at school/college, or out shopping, etc., have no sign language, no gestures, no facial expression. Then imagine that for eight years, but no one really understands. It was like torture, and I was the only person that knew it was happening. My body and face were frozen most of the time. I became hyperconscious of myself when outside the home and it was a relief to get back as I was always exhausted. I attempted to hide it (an impossible task) because I felt so ashamed that I couldn't do what other people seemed to find so natural and easy - to speak. At times I felt suicidal. — Carl Sutton

Sculpture does not reject resemblance, of which, indeed, it has need. But resemblance is not its first aim.
What it is looking for, in its periods of greatness, is the gesture, the expression, or the empty stare which
will sum up all the gestures and all the stares in the world. Its purpose is not to imitate, but to stylize and
to imprison in one significant expression the fleeting ecstasy of the body or the infinite variety of human
attitudes. Then, and only then, does it erect, on the pediments of teeming cities, the model, the type, the
motionless perfection that will cool, for one moment, the fevered brow of man. The frustrated lover of
love can finally gaze at the Greek caryatides and grasp what it is that triumphs, in the body and face of the
woman, over every degradation — Albert Camus

When you speak to any, especially of quality, look them full in the face; other gestures betraying want of breeding, confidence, or honesty; dejected eyes confessing, to most judgments, guilt or folly. — Frances Osborne

Arrogance is in everything I do. It is in my gestures, the harshness of my voice, in the glow of my gaze, in my sinewy, tormented face. — Coco Chanel

It is impossible to foretell the future with any degree of accuracy, that it is impossible to rehearse life. A fault in the scenery, a face in the audience, an interruption of the audience on to the stage, and all our carefully planned gesture mean nothing, or mean too much. — E. M. Forster

The material memories are not usually part of what is said about a picture, and that is a fault in interpretation because every painting captures a certain resistance of paint, a prodding gesture of the brush, a speed and insistence in the face of mindless matter ... — James Elkins

Nina turned her face to the water, looking out at the narrow houses that lined the Geldcanal. Jesper saw that the residents had filled their windows with candles, as if these small gestures might somehow push back the dark.
"I'm pretending those lights are for him," she said. She plucked a stray red petal from Matthias' chest, sighed, and released his hand, rising slowly. "I know it's time."
Jesper put his arm around her. "He loved you so much, Nina. Loving you made him better."
"Did it make a difference in the end?"
"Of course it did," said Inej. "Matthias and I didn't pray to the same god, but we knew there was something beyond this life. He went easier to the next world knowing he'd done good in this one. — Leigh Bardugo

We rarely get to prepare ourselves in meadows or on graveled walks; we do it on short notice in places without windows, hospital corridors, rooms like this lounge with its cracked plastic sofa and Cinzano ashtrays, where the cafe curtains cover blank concrete. In rooms like this, with so little time, we prepare our gestures, get them by heart so we can do them when we're frightened in the face of Doom. — Thomas Harris

Men, too, secrete the inhuman. At certain moments of lucidity, the mechanical aspect of their gestures, their meaningless pantomime makes silly everything that surrounds them. A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him, but you see his incomprehensible dumb show: you wonder why he is alive. This discomfort in the face of man's own inhumanity, this incalculable tumble before the image of what we are, this "nausea," as a writer of today calls it, is also the absurd. — Albert Camus

Further expanding the already large class of Foucauldian apparatuses, I shall cal an apparatus literally anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, determine, intercept, model, control , or secure the gestures, behaviors, opinions, or discourses of living beings. Not only, therefore, prisons, madhouses, the panopticon, schools, confession, factories, disciplines, juridical measures, and so forth (whose connection with power is in a certain sense evident), but also the pen, writing, literature, philosophy, agriculture, cigarettes, navigation, computers, cellular telephones and - why not - language itself, which is perhaps the most ancient of apparatuses - one in which thousands and thousands of years ago a primitive inadvertently let himself be captured, probably without realizing the consequences that he was about to face. — Giorgio Agamben

He must notice that I'm not understanding. He dips a finger beneath the surface of the water and pulls up; with a vibrant pulse of his majick, the aqua raises him up until he's on something similar to a pillar and face to face with me. Then despite the language barrier, he speaks slowly and adds hand gestures. Like I'm the lake simpleton. The look on my face must pass along how I feel about it because he stops and laughs, reminding me of the sound wooden wind chimes make on a breezy day. It's deep, peaceful, and resonates with my power; my heart stutters from a mini overload, similar to having drunk too much caffeine. — Sara Brackett