Quotes About Observation

I grew up on movie sets, getting to see storytelling happen up close.

When people talk about televisual phenomena such as 'Big Brother,' I haven't a clue what they're talking about. Having said that, if I'm staying in a hotel and there's a television in there, I'll go straight to it and watch it as if it's some incredible new invention.

You'll never even catch me doing that 'soft atheist' thing of very softly singing along or just mouthing the words, looking down at a hymn sheet every few seconds to check the words. To state the obvious, as an atheist, the hymn sheet is no use to me. So I just stand there, looking straight ahead or up at the ceiling, and do nothing.

There's people who live life authentically and there's people who live a life of fabrication. And it begins with the question of how you're gonna do your time. And these are observations I made about Folsom when I was there with Dustin Hoffman when he was directing 'Straight Time.'

When we were little, our parents couldn't tell us apart from the side or the back, they had to look at us straight on.

For me, comedy is a day-to-day report on the human condition. It's what's happening right now. I get maybe 20 minutes of my act straight from the newspaper.

When I'm filming a documentary, I feel like I should be the straight man, watching with a raised eyebrow.

Working with Salman, I have observed that he is a very straightforward person.

With Millais's paintings, it's microscopic; when he does hair, it's extraordinary: you can see every strand.

Strange, to see what delight we married people have to see these poor fools decoyed into our condition, every man and wife gazing and smiling at them.

My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books.

It puts you in a kind of a strange situation where everybody is looking at every little thing you do.

One gets into a strange psychological, almost hypnotic, state of mind while on the firing line which probably prevents the mind's eye from observing and noticing things in a normal way.

French people are strange about America, I think.

I was saying earlier that it's really strange - you can almost step outside yourself and observe yourself running, and that's what I was doing.

Being a shy person, I always felt strange outside with my camera.

People think it's strange how briskly I move through museums. Sure, I could stand in front of each piece and stare at it for a good long time. But that's not me.

I never wore a watch. I always depend on public clocks, and stores have clocks, but that is strange.

In a strange way, you have to have a certain amount of distance from a thing in order to be able to write about it.

It's hard not to get depressed when you pay attention to the world and how strangely and corrupt the people in it sometimes behave.

I'm most interested in finding the strangeness and irony in reality. That's my forte.

When you meet a stranger, look at his shoes. Keep your money in your shoes.

Anytime you see a bit where some stranger does something to me, it's me.

I once spent an entire night in a hotel in New York looking across the way into someone's apartment where nothing was happening but daily life, a phone call, television watching, staring into the fridge. Seeing how those strangers lived over that small distance and in absolute silence moved me deeply.