Quotes About Observation

Don't write," he said, seeing me scribbling into my notebook, taking me for a journalist. "Periodista?" Diego asked. "Pensionado," I said. Retiree.

I attended one of the many Mexican weddings that weekend, as an uninvited, eavesdropping celebrant.

When something human is recorded, good travel writing happens.

great white blimp tethered to a cornfield—a surveillance balloon.

I was shown each second passing as the train belted along, ticking off the buildings with a speed that made me melancholy.

what made this sense emphatic was that all this time, as the policeman was screaming, local people—slum dwellers, barefoot children, women with bundles—were passing by, glancing at me, and moving on. They knew what was happening

Paul Theroux

Pimsa," Héctor said, passing the industrial park. "What's that?

The people on the platform stood watching from under large black umbrellas that shone with wetness

I stopped simply to look around, in the idle curiosity that is available to any person with a car in Mexico and no particular place to go.

Why is it . . . that an Englishman is unhappy until he has explained America?

I was apprehensive for my being conspicuous: Ignacio was right—no gringos visible, either in cars or walking.

Paul Theroux

Most people come to Africa to see large or outlandish animals in the wild, while some others — "the new gang — the gang of virtue" — make the visit to tell Africans how to improve their lives. And many people do both — animal watching in the early morning, busybodying in the afternoon.

Aliens usually missed the point about England by investing its landscape with the passions of its great literature and it had so seldom been seen plainly, without literary footnotes.

The glare of gas station rest stops, mystical, comet-like as they rushed past, but melancholy and ordinary when we paused for the ten-minute breaks.

But curious to see the fence, I drove to the Rio Grande Valley, south to Harlingen, over to McAllen, and down Twenty-Third Street to International Boulevard and the frontier at Hidalgo, where the thing was obvious, ugly, and unambiguous.

look across the culvert that holds the greenish residue of the Rio Grande

In my what-am-I-doing-here? mood Akisha was a timely lesson. She made a point of staying positive, didn't grumble, never gossiped, and she expected the best from her students. She was also a passionate photographer, and though her talk was always upbeat, her photographs were a record of all she had seen.

There are eyes everywhere. No blind spot left. What shall we dream of when everything becomes visible? We'll dream of being blind.

Watch the little things in life, the ones you have control over. Keep your eyes glued to the peas and every speck of dust on the floor.

Who pities those who wait? They are easily recognized: by their gentleness, by their falsely attentive looks—attentive, yes, but to something other than what they are looking at—by their absentmindedness.

Quién se apiada del que espera? Se le reconoce fácilmente: por su mansedumbre, por su mirada atenta, pero, con una atención falsa, atentos a otra cosa que lo que están mirando: a la ausencia.

People give flowers as present because flowers contain true meaning of love. Anyone who tries to posses a flower will have to watch its beauty fading. But if you simply look at a flower in the field, you'll keep it forever. That is what the forest taught me. That you will never be mine, and that is why i will never lose you.