Quotes About Observation

How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

In reality the gatherings were held in order to entertain these few Moslem guests, to whom the unaccountable behavior of Europeans never ceased to be a fascinating spectacle. Most of the Europeans, of course, thought the Moslem gentlemen were invited to add local color.

Men were looking at her, but with neither sympathy nor antipathy. Nor even with curiosity, she thought. They had the absorbed and vacant expression of the man who looks into his handkerchief after blowing his nose.

You must watch the universe as it cracks over your head.

restricted to a single modality (face, or voice, or such autonomic nervous system changes as indicated by swallowing), it is an important flag that something important is happening which should be explored.

I came to that wooden marching band. I stopped and looked. There was a trumpet, trombone, clarinet, and drum. Birds don't live alone, I told myself. They live in flocks. Like people. People are always in a group. Like that little wooden band.

Everybody lives inside his or her movie. Mine had usually seemed a light comedy. Then I noticed the first dead bee on the driveway.

Japanese goldfish, With your gossamer tail, You are the loveliest creature I have ever seen. Japanese kitten, Put your tongue back in where it belongs And go away. I know exactly what you are thinking.

In practice I think it's easier to see ugliness than to imagine beauty.

Everything's a data point.

Do as others do, not as they say. Sometimes, what people tell you to do with stocks is not as revealing as what people are actually doing. This is why I like to look at company insiders before I buy or sell a particular stock.

Nobody knows how to just shut the fuck up and look out the window anymore.

The spectacle is at the same time the mirage of self in the mirror of things.

Catey, you were so on it," said Sophie. "You just stood there and you looked around and you saw this convertible. You pointed at it and you said, 'The Lord provides.'

It always amazes me how people in Europe and the United States can be so indifferent to the speeches of their chancellor or president, for these worlds from the top can be a wind sock for what might happen next.

No flower is quite like another of the same species. On a single bush one is constantly surprised by the remarkable character shown by each individual rose. But from the house all one sees is a garden, which is all there is to it anyway in the long run.

luxury is the enemy of observation, a costly indulgence that induces such a good feeling that you notice nothing. Luxury spoils and infantilizes you and prevents you from knowing the world. That is its purpose...

Unless there is a strong sense of place there is no travel writing, but it need not come from topographical description; dialogue can also convey a sense of place. Even so, I insist, the traveler invents the place. Feeling compelled to comment on my travel books, people say to me, I went there---China, India, the Pacific, Albania-- and it wasn't like that. I say, Because I am not you.

Someone who seems doddery is perhaps not doddery at all but only an older person absorbed in squinting concentration, as though on an ultimate trip, memorizing a scene, grateful for being alive to see it.

Drunk people, loud people, obvious and angry people, people stammering and stumbling, spilling drinks and scarfing small burned sausages and cheese cubes on toothpicks. They had surrendered all power and direction, they they were yelling and gasping. They strengthened me. I did not want to be that way. I stood calmer, observing them.

A British traveler remarked, 'There are [fashions in Guatemala] which it would require more than common charity to speak of with respect...' FILL IN YOUR OWN GRIPES! ;-)

You travel all over, the woman said. Do you write about your travels? I said, Yes, I did. Articles. Books. Whatever. You must write Paul Theroux-type travel books, she said. I said, Exactly, and told her why.

He caught my eye, saw me staring, and waved in a neighborly way, from his own country.

Strollers see more, and are more polite, than drivers.