Every Valentine's Day, I pretend I don't care. Like many of us, I say I don't want the flowers or chocolates or a homemade card. How cheesy. I pretend that it's over-the-top to want the person you like to make you a ridiculously nice dinner, or do some showy gesture, ala John Cusack with the boombox in 'Say Anything.'

As governor, when I visited our troops in Kuwait and Iraq, I served them Thanksgiving dinner. It was a small gesture compared to their sacrifice.

Technology is making gestures precise and brutal, and with them men.

All art is an intensely vulnerable gesture, and it is made with no small amounts of risk, and fear. So, I have plenty of sympathy for self-defense mechanisms, especially among artists.

You can't forget that organizational success flows from the hearts and minds of the men and women you lead. Rather than treating your people as you'd like to be treated, treat them as they would like to be treated. Small gestures like opting for face-to-face meetings or sending personal notes can have an enormous impact on teams and their morale.

Our strength is not just in the size of our defense budget, but in the size of our hearts, in the size of our gratitude for their sacrifice. And that's not just measured in words or gestures.

It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper.

We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the 'social-worker'-judge; it is on them that the universal reign of the normative is based; and each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it his body, his gestures, his behavior, his aptitudes, his achievements.

And the purpose of small talk is not to be controversial, clever or even interesting. It's simply to fill the silent void with a small gesture of common humanity. It's a spoken smile, a verbal handshake.

I am not married, no. I wasn't really into the notion when I was younger, but now I think a proposal is the ultimate romantic gesture.

I try to do romantic gestures all the time.

There is a time for risky love. There is a time for extravagant gestures. There is a time to pour out your affections on one you love. And when the time comes - seize it, don't miss it.

Have you ever heard a good joke? If you've ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you're already on the way to poetry. It's about using words in very precise ways and using gesture.

A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does.

Every word, facial expression, gesture, or action on the part of a parent gives the child some message about self-worth. It is sad that so many parents don't realize what messages they are sending.

The only reason I wanted 'Making Toast' as the title is that it is a simple gesture of moving on. Every morning there's the bread and you make the toast and you start the day.

I'm not attracted to naturalism, I'm not attracted to behavior, I'm attracted to dance. I'm attracted to gesture, I'm attracted to singing with your voice, as opposed to having a natural manner. I'm a theater actor first, so that probably influences a lot of my approach. And I think in many ways, naturalism has ruined movies.

Gestures, in love, are incomparably more attractive, effective and valuable than words.

The success of the first album was almost an anomaly, and it could remain a fantastic anomaly. It was not crafted for commercial success. I remember meetings with my label saying it had no radio singles. For me, the second album was a gesture of independence.

For me, I always have looked at 'indie' as a term of 'independence.' Never associated a sonic gesture with that in the same way that pop music has always meant 'popular' to me; you know, it didn't define a sound.

Every day, do small gestures of generosity! It does not mean go to Cambodia. Do it at home. If you do nothing at home, evil becomes normal.

Music is the social act of communication among people, a gesture of friendship, the strongest there is.

Remember that a gesture of friendship, no matter how small, is always appreciated.

The higher the artist, the fewer the gestures. The fewer the tools, the greater the imagination. The greater the will, the greater the secret failure.