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.

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.

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

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.

The world is simply a better place when you smile.

Mothers always find ways to fit in the work - but then when you're working, you feel that you should be spending time with your children and then when you're with your children, you're thinking about working.

Most birds are very stiff-necked, like the robin, and as they run or hop upon the ground, carry the head as if it were riveted to the body. Not so the oven-bird, or the other birds that walk, as the cow-bunting, or the quail, or the crow. They move the head forward with the movement of the feet.

There are a lot of people of my generation in New Zealand literature, young writers on their first or second books, that I'm just really excited about. There seems to be a big gap between the generation above and us; it seems to be quite radically different in terms of form and approach.

I idolize Gene Hackman. He is not a natural star, not an incandescent personality like Jack Nicholson, but he makes luminous the problems of being an ordinary man in an extraordinary situation.

No one has really ever defined what a friend is.

The will must be stronger than the skill.

I have never had a current state of mind. My mind changes a great deal. I am very affected by any sorrow or sad thing, and I am very affected by joy and beauty.

We didn't do wrong things because we didn't want to embarrass our parents.

I have a very broad range of life experiences.

Unfortunately, I think we've probably all had the experience that if we're in a relationship where one of the partners is doing it 'my' way, that relationship is not going to survive.

We've had a series of major news stories that have brought in viewers who either were sampling to see what else was available or were normal news watchers. The Florida recount and the end of the election was a huge development. And then 9/11 came along.

I think about a Richard Avedon photo series, the kind of faces he gets of real people, which I find so captivating. Fellini was also great in filling his films with this ambiance, this environment, sometimes chaotic and carnival-like, but people's faces were always amazing.

In the end, people believed what they wanted to believe. The truth had very little to do with it.

The past has infinite value if one learns from it.

I found out animation is incredibly boring. You draw and draw and draw, and it's only a few seconds done in a week.

I think great writers should write great shows, and I have trouble with, like, what you are in life shouldn't automatically make you what you do in your art. It doesn't necessarily translate.

Nothing ages a woman like living in the country.

Grace then is gracethat is to say it is sovereign it is free it is sure it is unconditional and it is everlasting.

I happen to take photographs, and they happen to be used for a lot of things, but they're not really made to order. They're paid for, but they're not made for order. I've never really done real commercial work.

I've never been a social person. When I grew up, the other girls would all be combing their hair and exchanging lipstick, and I just couldn't do that group thing.

I saw Cheap Trick play 'In Color,' and it was awesome.

Movies can tell us about our place, or lack of place, in our culture.

I don’t believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process.

It is often easier to fight for your principles than to live up to them.