smiling activates the release of neuropeptides that work toward fighting off stress.

When you're smiling, the whole world smiles with you

Contagious smiling (and frowning and scowling and so on) is the basis of reading others' emotions and registering how you should, in turn, feel.

We tend to mimic the smiles or frowns of others because it helps us better understand what other people are feeling, allowing us to respond appropriately.

Evidence shows that an instinct for facial mimicry allows us to empathize with and even experience other people's feelings.

“Facial mimicry certainly plays some role, and perhaps a key role, in understanding other people’s emotional states,” Dr. Kevin Ochsner

A person's ability to recognize and "share" others' emotions can be inhibited when they can't mimic faces, even from something as simple as long-term pacifier use.

you mimic their expression unconsciously, which then tells your brain what to feel. All this happens in a few hundred milliseconds.

We are unconsciously learning things by what we see and that's why infants mimic their parents behavior. When they smile to them, they smile back.

Each time you smile, you throw a little feel-good party in your brain. The act of smiling activates neural messaging that benefits your health and happiness.

the serotonin release brought on by your smile serves as an anti-depressant/mood lifter.

when you view a person smiling, you actually feel rewarded.

When you smile,you are creating a symbiotic relationship that allows both of you to release feel-good chemicals in your brain, activate reward centers, make you both more attractive, and increase the chances of you both living longer, healthier lives.

First stage: You see an expressive face You need to know what the expression means so you can react effectively.

Second stage: You simulate the facial expression Simulation uses the same areas of your brain that cause your facial expressions- it may therefore cause you to mimic the expression.

Third stage: The simulation tells you how it feels to make that expression The context or your knowledge about the expresser may have an influence.

This quick, automatic, and unconscious process allows you to connect the subtle emotion signals of others to your own emotion experiences.

Smiling makes us happier Smiling triggers a reduction in stress-enhancing hormones and increases the production of mood-enhancing hormones.

Even forcing a “fake” smile when you’re not truly feeling it has been shown to reduce stress and result in more positive feelings.

Genuine smiles might help people see eye-to-eye during interactions. People who often make genuine smiles may have an easier time convincing others to adopt their goals.

The world is simply a better place when you smile.

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

No other minority community generates such a polarized response as Roma. On the one hand Roma signify an intriguing object of fascination with a unique history and culture while on the other hand Roma are excluded and persecuted wherever they live.

I did theater for 15 years, and I spent a lot of time as an understudy.

If the whole world is in a rush and people are out of step with themselves, they fail to catch that quirky aura and that special quality of life that feeds our soul-searching frame of mind and that builds a coveted haven, giving recognition and self-reliance.

Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.

The architecture for 'Paladin' - given that it's at least three books, with the possibility of more - turned out to be bigger than anything I've ever created, with multiple levels of reality, interlocking mysteries and a terabyte of time frame.

If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.

I am consciously trying not to make it sound Celtic or African.

'You are no saint,' says the devil. Well, if I am not, I am a sinner, and Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Sink or swim, I go to Him; other hope, I have none.

It's always good to have a story arch.

In writing 'The Satanic Verses,' I think I was writing for the first time from the whole of myself. The English part, the Indian part. The part of me that loves London, and the part that longs for Bombay. And at my typewriter, alone, I could indulge this.

Fences work and the walls work and separations work. They afford to any nation the delay of entry.

You will never catch up with the spread of AIDS no matter how much money, no matter how many antiretrovirals are put into the system, unless you stop its growth. And the only way to stop its growth is prevention.

I've never seen a world where only men were responsible for the violence, and the women were innocent. They go together. Men and women are a violent mixture.

Medicine is probably one of the best backgrounds for a writer to find stories. I always think cops and docs have the best background because we see so much of human behavior, such a range of human emotions.

To do a television show, one can be sort of spoiled. You get to have your own trailer, your own space - that sort of thing.

I thank God for creating gay men. Because if it wasnt for them us fat women would have no one to dance with.

Everyone has expectations. You just don't want to have them dashed, so you're quiet about them.

Present annual world energy consumption is about equal to the annihilation energy of 4 tons of matter.

My path has not been determined. I shall have more experiences and pass many more milestones.

I went to film school, worked as an assistant, and wrote several scripts that haven't gotten made.

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.

My parents were in the book business, my brothers still run the Dutton bookstores in Los Angeles, and I've been interested in editing books and journals all of my life.

If you are sure you understand everything that is going on, you are hopelessly confused.