Mannerisms Quotes & Sayings

As soon as you start to talk about your own mannerisms, you are screwed. Because if you are aware of your own mannerisms, or beyond that even what makes any one thing funny to people, I really ascribe to that that if you start deconstructing it too much, it is immediately not funny. — Steve Carell

As I've gotten older, my mannerisms are more and more like my mom's. Also, she was an educator - she's extremely passionate about education and children. I guess I inherited that in some way. — Jenna Bush

As proof that HOW we see things matters, Gen. Montgomery took a preprepared text that had been deemed an innocuous complement to his American troops and delivered it in such a way that his condescension prompted more division than unity. — Jean Edward Smith

A YEAR OR SO AGO I READ AN ARTICLE THAT SAID in the next five years we will become a conglomerate of the people we hang out with. The article went so far as to say relationships were a greater predictor of who we will become than exercise, diet, or media consumption. And if you think about it, the idea makes sense. As much as we are independent beings, contained in our own skin, the ideas and experiences we exchange with others grow into us like vines and reveal themselves in our mannerisms and language and outlook on life. If you want to make a sad person happy, start by planting them in a community of optimists. — Donald Miller

Nettie, it quickly developed, had no gift for mothering. Many women have no gift for it. They mimic the recalled gestures and mannerisms of the women they've been trained to become and hope for the best. — Vivian Gornick

A gathering of booksellers is a pleasant sanhedrim to attend. The members of this ancient craft bear mannerisms and earmarks just as definitely recognizable as those of the cloak and suit business or any other trade. They are likely to be a little - shall we say - worn at the bindings, as becomes men who have forsaken worldly profit to pursue a noble calling ill rewarded in cash. They are possibly a trifle embittered, which is an excellent demeanour for mankind in the face of inscrutable heaven. Long experience with publishers' salesmen makes them suspicious of books praised between the courses of a heavy meal. — Christopher Morley

The whole set of stylizations that are known as "camp" (a word that I was hearing then for the first time) was, in 1926, self-explanatory. Women moved and gesticulated in this way. Homosexuals wished for obvious reasons to copy them. The strange thing about "camp" is that it has been fossilized. The mannerisms have never changed. If I were now to see a woman sitting with her knees clamped together, one hand on her hip and the other lightly touching her back hair, I should think, "Either she scored her last social triumph in 1926 or it is a man in drag. — Quentin Crisp

Mangal draws me aside and tells me that Puraji's doctor took a full day looking for the shrubs and herbs for the treatment. Wherefore the relief, i ask myself. Nothing has changed. If anything, the price is twenty four hours closer to death. I am about to leave when the doctor calls out to me. ' You'll wait outside till i have finished my examination.' It's a long, long time since anyone has spoken to me without my honorific. I am upset at his lack of mannerisms and grateful. If i am ordered around, someone else must be in charge. — Kiran Nagarkar

When you're not in the game, you can watch. Certain players have mannerisms, and they do the same things repetitiously. — Chris Bosh

There's nothing better than actually getting to watch the person and see his or her mannerisms. — Jonathan Jackson

I'm not really a political satirist. I don't kid myself. I'm more interested in doing the mannerisms and the personality. — Rich Little

You're right. You and Millie look more like your mom," I said...
"That's because we spent more time with her," Henry said seriously, as if it were common knowledge, as if resemblances were based on nurture instead of nature. It was true, to a point. Mannerisms, quirks, style. All those things could be learned and copied.
"So if I spend a lot of time with Kathleen, do you think she'll start to look like me?" I asked him, steering the focus away from his father.
Henry looked doubtfully from me to my grunting, banana-bearded child and back again.
"I hope so," he said.
Georgia snickered, and I hooted and held my hand in the air so Henry could give me five.
"You hear that, Georgia? Henry hopes so," I crowed. "I guess that means your baby daddy is a beautiful man."
Henry obviously didn't mean to be funny, and he totally left me hanging. Georgia reached up and slapped my hand and winked at me. — Amy Harmon

Insofar as he'd formed any opinion of her, it was that she suffered from misplaced gentility and the mistaken belief that etiquette meant good breeding. She mistook mannerisms for manners. — Terry Pratchett

We can get carried away with our heads in books, and although there's so much to be learned from that, I think sitting in a cafe and speaking with someone - whatever it is, their mannerisms, their choices, are just as valuable as any class you can go to. — Rose McIver

All this convinced him that he had come to one of those revolting havens where pathetic depravity makes its abode, born of tawdry education and the terrible populousness of the capital. One of those havens where man blasphemously crushes and derides all the pure and holy that adorns life, where woman, the beauty of the world, the crown of creation, turns into some strange, ambiguous being, where, along with purity of soul, she loses everything feminine and repulsively adopts all the mannerisms and insolence of a man, and ceases to be that weak, that beautiful being so different from us. — Nikolai Gogol

With any mannerisms or dialogue, you have to be careful you're not just serving yourself. What happens with improving is a lot of times, if you're not in the framework of the script, you're just making everything easier so it fits you. — Ray Liotta

It's not as if he's good-looking, because he's not. Sometimes he's so plain that he looks bland. But it's his voice and his mannerisms that fill him with some kind of color. I listen to his voice and its resonance hooks me in. The worry lines on his forehead, his expression when he twists his face into a smile, and the way his whole face lights up when he laughs those short bursts of laughter. — Melina Marchetta

She coughed into her fist. "I, ahem, don't want to sound didactic or fictitious in any manner," she began, doing a great Woody impression. She had his timing, the speech delay tactics. She had the hand mannerisms. She had the New York accent. It was her best work. "But I may have some important information." Myron — Harlan Coben

I tried to copy some of his mannerisms at first but it didn't work. And then I just let the spirit of the character grow in me and it just took its rightful place. I started to speak the lines and it felt right. — Derek Luke

Sexism occurs when we assume that some people are less valid or natural than others because of their sex, gender, or sexuality; it occurs when we project our own expectations and assumptions about sex, gender, and sexuality onto other people, and police their behaviors accordingly; it occurs when we reduce another person to their sex, gender, or sexuality rather than seeing them as a whole, legitimate person. That is sexism. And a person is a legitimate feminist when they have made a commitment to challenging sexist double standards wherever and whenever they arise. An individual's personal style, mannerisms, identity, consensual sexual partners, and live choices simply shouldn't factor into it. — Julia Serano

I spent three days with Don King, and I interviewed 45 people. I studied his speech, his mannerisms. He invited me to a couple of fights, and I watched him. — Ving Rhames

A deep, black grief gripped Robert Kennedy in the months following his brother's assassination. He lost weight, fell into melancholy silences, wore his brother's clothes, smoked the cigars his brother had liked, and imitated his mannerisms. — Thurston Clarke

He spoke so effortlessly, as if his mouth were a musical instrument that just let sound out when touched, when opened. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

One feels such love for the little ones, such anticipation that all that is lovely in life will be known by them, such fondness for that set of attributes manifested uniquely in each: mannerisms of bravado, of vulnerability, habits of speech and mispronouncement and so forth; the smell of the hair and head, the feel of the tiny hand in yours - and then the little one is gone! Taken! One is thunderstruck that such a brutal violation has occurred in what had previously seemed a benevolent world. From nothingness, there arose great love; now, its source nullified, that love, searching and sick, converts to the most abysmal suffering imaginable. — George Saunders

Long looking with admiration produces change. From your heroes you pick up mannerisms and phrases and tones of voice and facial expressions and habits and demeanors and convictions and beliefs. The more admirable the hero is and the more intense your admiration is, the more profound will be your transformation. In the case of Jesus, he is infinitely admirable, and our admiration rises to the most absolute worship. Therefore, when we behold him as we should, the change is profound. — John Piper

I know what you mean about wishing somebody wasn't there, though. It's just usually it's myself that I wish I could get away from. Seriously, think about this. I have never been anywhere that I haven't been. I've never had a kiss when I wasn't one of the kissers. Y'know, I've never, um, gone to the movies, when I wasn't there in the audience. I've never been out bowling, if I wasn't there, y'know making some stupid joke. I think that's why so many people hate themselves. Seriously, it's just they are sick to death of being around themselves.
Jesse: Let's say that you and I were together all the time, then you'd start to hate a lot of my mannerisms. The way every time we would have people over, uh, I'd be insecure, and I'd get a little too drunk. Or, uh, the way I'd tell the same stupid pseudo-intellectual story again, and again. Y'see, I've heard all those stories. So of course I'm sick of myself. But being with you, uh, it's made me feel like I'm somebody else. — Jesse

Nothing is more piquant than when a man of genius possesses mannerisms; not so when they possess him
this leads to spiritual petrification. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

A leadership comfort zone brings stagnancy, deprives one of innovation, stifles growth and frustrates both the leader and the team they lead. Your personal preferences like leadership style, communication style, prejudices, habits and mannerisms must be effectively managed so that they do not work against you. You have to be careful that your strengths do not end up becoming a hindering comfort zone. Seek to lead, driven by a cause. — Archibald Marwizi

Music does not live until it's interpreted - with all of its flaws, mannerisms, etc. It needs to be incarnated to be something. — Helene Grimaud

If you have to tell a story without speaking, it's sort of like - I come from a dance background, so it's like a ballet where you have to tell a story with just your body. I think that's really interesting to have to tell a story with just your face and your mannerisms, and I'd like to tap into that world. — Sami Gayle

I didn't go Hollywood on the outside with flashy cars, upstairs maids and mink-covered bathroom fixtures. I went Hollywood on the inside, and that's worst of all. I tried to avoid being natural. I lowered my voice. I copied the mannerisms of other stars. I struck poses. — Joan Caulfield

Tom looked more and more like a rabbi. As is the way of men of character in provincial towns, he tended to become a collection of mannerisms, a caricature of himself. — Frank O'Connor

I have the mannerisms of a mannequin. If you want to see me naked, you're going to have to buy the clothes on my body. — Jarod Kintz

I'm attracted to people. To the words they speak, to the actions they take, to their full-bodied mannerisms and soulful gaits. I am attracted to people. To impassioned hearts that beat out of sync, the ones that skip a measure, heard in hushed places and violent spaces - I am attracted to people. — Krista Ritchie

No matter how bad things got, no matter how anxious the staff became, the commander had to "preserve optimism in himself and in his command. Without confidence, enthusiasm and optimism in the command, victory is scarcely obtainable." Eisenhower realized that "optimism and pessimism are infectious and they spread more rapidly from the head downward than in any other direction." He learned that a commander's optimism "has a most extraordinary effect upon all with whom he comes in contact. With this clear realization, I firmly determined that my mannerisms and speech in public would always reflect the cheerful certainty of victory - that any pessimism and discouragement I might ever feel would be reserved for my pillow. — Stephen E. Ambrose

When women are relegated to moods, mannerisms, and contours that conform to a single ideal of beauty and behavior, they are captured in both body and soul, and are no longer free. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Even when you are playing someone who is real, you get their mannerisms and you get their little quirks, but, it still has to be something inside of you that connects with the role, or else you will not be any good. — Tammy Blanchard

I'm one of those people that feels that Americans that shouldn't do Shakespeare ... The rhythms of the English language and the mannerisms of the English speech seems to work effortlessly with William Shakespeare, but when Americans do it, something seems stuck. — Nicolas Cage

I have often been told that I have many of the same mannerisms as Jack Benny and certainly Bob Cummings. — Dwayne Hickman

THOMAS JEFFERSON LEFT POSTERITY an immense correspondence, and I am particularly indebted to The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, published by Princeton University Press and first edited by Julian P. Boyd. I am, moreover, grateful to the incumbent editors of the Papers, especially general editor Barbara B. Oberg, for sharing unpublished transcripts of letters gathered for future volumes. The goal of the Princeton edition was, and continues to be, "to present as accurate a text as possible and to preserve as many of Jefferson's distinctive mannerisms of writing as can be done." To provide clarity and readability for a modern audience, however, I have taken the liberty of regularizing much of the quoted language from Jefferson and from his contemporaries. I have, for instance, silently corrected Jefferson's frequent use of "it's" for "its" and "recieve" for "receive," and have, in most cases, expanded contractions and abbreviations and followed generally accepted practices of capitalization. — Jon Meacham

I love Friends, so I try to bring Jennifer Aniston's mannerisms to my show. — Selena

There is a real-enough danger, I suppose, that sooner or later I'll bog down, perhaps disappear entirely, in my own methods, locutions, and mannerisms. On the whole, though, I'm very hopeful. — J.D. Salinger

Dr. Finch had drunk so long and so deep of his heady brew that his being was shot through with curious mannerisms and odd exclamations. — Harper Lee

Tiant, noted for odd pitching mannerisms, is also a famous mound dawdler. Stands on hill like sunstruck archeologist at Knossos. Regards ruins. Studies sun. Studies landscape. Looks at artifact in hand. Wonders: Keep this potsherd or throw it away? Does Smithsonian want it? Hmm. Prepares to throw it away. Pauses. Sudd. discovers writing on object. Hmm. Possible Linear B inscript.? Sighs. Decides. Throws. Wipes face. Repeats whole thing. Innings & hours creep by. Spectators clap, yawn, droop, expire. — Roger Angell

The movements which I make I cannot possibly repress because, at the time, I am actually the idea I am interpreting, and naturally I picture my players and auditors as in accord with me. I know, of course, that my mannerisms have been widely discussed. — John Philip Sousa

There are just some really beautiful people in the world. When you're walking down the street, or you're at a restaurant, someone catches your eye because they have their own look. It goes way beyond what they're wearing - into their mannerisms, the way they smile, or just the way they hold themselves. — Mary-Kate Olsen

The best thing about Caleb is not his perfect body, or his half smiles, or his even sexier voice ... it's his mannerisms. The teasing, the way he runs his thumbnail across his bottom lip when he's thinking, the way he bites his tongue when he's turned on. The way he makes me look at him when I have an orgasm. He can undress you with one look, make you feel like you're standing naked in front of him.I know from experience, it's a pleasure to be naked in front of Caleb. — Tarryn Fisher

I feel like I'm a New Yorker to the bone. But there is a lot of the South in me. I know there is a lot of the South in my mannerisms. There's a lot of the South in my expectations of other people and how people treat each other. There's a lot of the South in the way I speak, but it could never be home. — Jacqueline Woodson

Darrow," she says so quietly, "how do you know where you're going?"
My hands tremble.
"You told me to let you in." I look down at her.
"I did but ... "
"How far do you want to go?"
I know she feels what's coming. I wonder how long she's felt it. The strangeness of me. The odd mannerisms. The distant soul.
She looks at her hands, stained red from the dust of the stone stairs. "All the way. — Pierce Brown

I feel I disappoint people when I am not 'Samantha.' They seem surprised when I don't have the same voice and the same mannerisms. They were booking 'Samantha,' and I would show up. — Kim Cattrall

I lack," said Laurent, "the easy mannerisms that are usually shared with," you could see him pushing the words out, "a lover."
"You lack the easy mannerisms that are usually shared with anyone," said Damen. — C.S. Pacat

It's often wrong to write for specific actors because one ends up using what is least interesting about them, their mannerisms and habits. I prefer not to write for specific people. — Claude Chabrol

I'm counting my drawer when Regn comes into the office. I hear her before she enters. I listen for her. The sound of the keypad, the sound of three doors. I saw her pull up on my way in. The anticipation is what I love. The details. The security of knowing she's arrived and will be here for the day. Even if we don't have the leisure of time, we have time. It is the unspoken acknowledgments to self. The constant checking and watching for expressions, inflections in the voice, mannerisms. It is a gradual advance. The more we are restrained, the stronger it grows. It is innocence and age that allows the affection to mature, naturally, as it should. Something inside stirs, the heart itself is attracted, much before the body responds. Knowing Regn looks forward to seeing me as much as I do her makes me happy. — Wheston Chancellor Grove

The endless procession of people and things that forms the world is for me an interminable gallery of pictures whose content bores me. It doesn't interest me because the soul is a monotonous thing and is always the same in everyone; it differs only in its personal manifestations and the best part of it is that which overflows into dreams, into mannerisms and gestures, and thus becomes part of the image that so captures my interest [ ... ] This is how I experience the animate exteriors of things and beings, in pure vision, indifferent as a god from another world to their content, to their spirit. I only go deep into the surface of other people, if I want profundity I look for it in myself and in my concept of things. — Fernando Pessoa

Publishing a novel is often likened to having a baby. It is much worse to that. It is like giving birth to something with cloven hooves, a monster in a black and white mask. Characters must reveal a blend of good and bad qualities with distinguishing tics and mannerisms. It obliges the writer to clear the mist from the mirror to see who you really are in order to establish who they really are. — Chloe Thurlow

So, to prepare for the role, I had to take music lessons, talk to wives who had husbands overseas, and carefully study the reactions and mannerisms of a friend who was expecting. — June Allyson

You can coat that shit in sugar, but it's still shit. — Kyran Pittman

The public will only stand genius in infintesimal doses,sprinkled with mannerisms and fashionable literature ... A fashionable genius!Doesn't that make you laugh?..what a waste of power! — Romain Rolland

I have never seen any of my work, I can't watch it because I am ultra critical. We all have little mannerisms that people may love about us, but can be embarrassing. Perhaps we got teased about them as kids and we may not like them ourselves. That is what it is like for me, I can't look at myself on screen even if the audience loves what I am doing. — Josh Peck

Human beings are natural mimickers. The more you're conscious of the other side's posture, mannerisms, and word choices - and the more you subtly reflect those back - the more accurate you'll be at taking their perspective. — Daniel H. Pink

Like other inveterate womanizers Strike had encountered, Duffield's voice and mannerisms were slightly camp. Perhaps such men became feminized by prolonged immersion in women's company, or perhaps it was a way of disarming their quarry. — Robert Galbraith

I have written it before and am not ashamed to write it again. Without Wodehouse I am not sure that I would be a tenth of what I am today
whatever that may be. In my teenage years, his writings awoke me to the possibilities of language. His rhythms, tropes, tricks and mannerisms are deep within me.
But more than that, he taught me something about good nature. It is enough to be benign, to be gentle, to be funny, to be kind. — Stephen Fry

Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I didn't drop into the mannerisms of another version of the character, but I guess I was pretty alert to that. — John Noble

It had started to worry me that if I wasn't careful my meekness could become a habit, a tic, something hardwired that my mannerisms would continue to express throughout my life regardless of my efforts - the way a drunk who, though in the wagon, still staggers and slurs like a drunk. — Lorrie Moore

All your mannerisms change easily when you have inch-long acrylic nails. — Margot Robbie

Too many of Disney animators, and a lot try to emulate Disney, are trying to hit what they call quality levels. They're boring mannerisms. — Ralph Bakshi

My aim is to escape from the medium with which I work; to leave no residue of technical mannerisms to stand between my expression and the observer. To seek freedom through significant form and design rather than through the diversion of so-called free and accidental brush handling. — Andrew Wyeth

The one thing I think I've noticed about shows that are supposed to be funny on television is that they've sort of become routinized, so there's an awful lot of mannerisms and joke lines that are sort of there to trigger laughter, rather than give actors a chance to play a moment. — Alan Alda

In writing about Red Guard activists during the Cultural Revolution, Anita Chan has observed that the "playing of a role in China was more than a sociological abstraction. Role-playing involved literal play-acting: a conscious assumption of the mannerisms and ways of speaking appropriate to the activist status and role."187 — Perry Link

Miss Charingford." The words seemed unwillingly wrested from his chest.
"Yes?"
"You are only the eleventh prettiest woman in all of Leicester until you open your mouth."
Her mouth dropped open. To insult her, atop all the other horrible, awful, impolite, unacceptable things that he'd said? "Thank you so much for those kind words, Grantham," she snapped out. "I'm glad to know that my mannerisms so sink me."
But this time, he didn't smile at her; his eyes didn't sparkle with that familiar mischief. "Once you speak," he said, "you have no equal. — Courtney Milan

During my last year in college I discovered that I was picking up the mannerisms of Akim Tamiroff, the only useful thing, in fact, that I learned in the entire four years. — Walker Percy

There is a feeble urgency behind all forced mannerisms of finery- haste and pomp cannot coincide.
— Nicholson Baker

Commercial jazz, soap opera, pulp fiction, comic strips, the movies set the images, mannerisms, standards, and aims of the urban masses. In one way or another, everyone is equal before these cultural machines; like technology itself, the mass media are nearly universal in their incidence and appeal. They are a kind of common denominator, a kind of scheme for pre-scheduled, mass emotions. — C. Wright Mills

It was an odd experience, this bringing to life of pages born of my pen and forgotten. From time to time they interested me -- they surprised me as much as if someone else had written them; yet I recognized the vocabulary, the shape of the sentences, the drive, the elliptical forms, the mannerisms. These pages were soaked through and through with my self -- there was a sickening intimacy about it, like the smell of a bedroom in which one has been shut up too long. — Simone De Beauvoir

The biggest obstacle is that when people fall in love, they tend to seek out the qualities of their ex in the people they date afterwards. A guy will seem attractive because he has the same hair as your ex, because he dresses similarly, because he drives the same car, or because he has similar mannerisms or interests. You are liable to believe that it is those things about him that attract you; however, the truth is that those things merely remind you of being attracted. On a psychological level, those two feelings are not so incredibly different, so they are easily confused. — Andrew Aitken

When it comes to ourselves, we often have a blind spot. That is, we fail to see ourselves as others see us. We fail to recognize our most obvious traits: our strengths, weaknesses, mannerisms. — Mark Link

Men don't understand how their mannerisms can get on women's nerves so that you feel you just have to snap. — Agatha Christie

I think in this, definitely, because you are feeling how it felt to live in a completely different time. The mannerisms and the way that people behaved was quite different. — Radha Mitchell

Ever notice how amused people are when you point out one of their mannerisms or a funny quirk about them? They start laughing and getting happy because they're thinking, "People notice me! I'm relevent!" It's OK to have these instincts, but you have to suppress them a bit. There are 6 billion people here, so it's not all about you. You need to let other people talk for a while and pay attention to their world for a sec. — Lesley Arfin

Modeling isn't really a tough job. Acting is much harder: so much prep and changing your look and mannerisms. It's a more difficult lifestyle being a model. I traveled all the time. Although, now I wonder, because I travel all the time for acting, too. So they both have their difficulties. — Olga Kurylenko

The praise of injudicious friends frequently fosters bad mannerisms. — Elisabeth Marbury

I do not like the Broadway theatre because it does not know how to say hello. The tone of voice is false, the mannerisms are false, the sex is false, ideal, the Hollywood world of perfection, the clean image, the well pressed clothes, the well scrubbed anus, odorless, inhuman, of the Hollywood actor, the Broadway star. And the terrible false dirt of Broadway, the lower depths in which the dirt is imitated, inaccurate. — Julian Beck

I'm big on facial expressions, and I'm big on mannerisms, which I find to be hilarious. — J. B. Smoove

The male dares to be different to the degree that he accepts his passivity and his desire to be female, his fagginess. The farthest out male is the dragqueen, but he, although different from most men, is exactly like all other dragqueens; like the functionalist, he has an identity - a female; he tries to define all his troubles away - but still no individuality. Not completely convinced that he's a woman, highly insecure about being sufficiently female, he conforms compulsively to the man-made feminine stereotype, ending up as nothing but a bundle of stilted mannerisms. — Valerie Solanas

As much as I love and respect my brother, I'm doing my best to distance myself from him and kind of show people that, even though we do look similar and have similar mannerisms, we are completely different. — Dave Franco

the details of anything you love are
always what is most thrilling, most poignant,
most important.
i loved her as she rose from bed and fell back
against it again, and all she did in-between.
when you love someone you accept them,
you become them in a way, and all they
do forms into you. their mannerisms turn
into truth- the way she holds her favorite coffee mug,
the way she laughs, the way she smells, the way her lips
curl after certain words. all of the simple things
suddenly become gigantic things and light up the world
before you like a flame thrown into the clouds.
what a breathtaking display. the way
the earth begins to dissolve in your periphery
and a human being replaces it.

no matter what they tell you-
a person is a universe when truly
loved and anything less is not
love at all. — Christopher Poindexter

Yes, we are all different. Different customs, different foods, different mannerisms, different languages, but not so different that we cannot get along with one another. If we will disagree without being disagreeable. — J. Martin Kohe