Quotes About Observation

Fort Lauderdale is sometimes called The Venice of America by people who clearly have never been to Venice.

In all my life I'd never been approached this way, the car pulling up, the Where you going? It was something I wish had happened hundreds of times. I was a looker - someone who looked over at every car at every traffic light, hoping something would happen, and almost never finding anyone looking back - always everyone looking forwards, and every time I felt stupid. Why should people look at you? Why should they care?

And worse, you're not doing anything interesting anymore. You're not seeing anything, saying anything. The weird paradox is that you think you're at the center of things, and that makes your opinions more valuable, but you yourself are becoming less vibrant. I bet you haven't done anything offscreen in months. Have you?

If things continue this way, there will be two societies - or at least I hope there will be two - the one you're helping create, and an alternative to it. You and your ilk will live, willingly, joyfully, under constant surveillance, watching each other always, commenting on each other, voting and liking and disliking each other, smiling and frowning, and otherwise doing nothing much else.

I was feeling everything much too much. Everything was pulling at my eyes. I spent hours floating in pools. I sat on terraces and stared for afternoons at mediocre views. I was feeling overjoyed for happy couples. I would see or hear about people, usually people I hardly knew or didn't even like, getting together, finding each other after so much groping, and I would feel bliss. I was blindsided by familiar things.

Oscar Wilde wrote, Good artists exist in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascination... [they] live the poetry [they] cannot write.

This was Josie's preferred method of parenting: go someplace like this, with grand scale and much to be discovered, and watch your children wander and injure themselves but not significantly. Sit and do nothing. When they come back to show you something, some rock or mop of seaweed, inspect it and ask questions about it. Socrates invented the ideal method for the parent who likes to sit and do very little.

To be described is to be seduced. Shit. One turn of phrase. One thing noticed that she'd never noticed. It works always.

Subjectivity is just objectivity waiting for data," Delaney said.

but look at it this way: If you've got the ugliest house on the street, you never have to look at it.

Het zonlicht over de schouder van de winkelbediende was wit en gelijkmatig, en toen hij ons glazen water inschonk was het het helderste water dat ik ooit had gezien. Het was de onverdunde ziel van de wereld.

The easiest way to witness the stupidity and misplaced hopes of all humanity is to watch, for twenty minutes, a human being using a leaf blower.

Through the smal tall bathroom window the December yard is gray and scratchy, the trees calligraphic.

Mis ojos vieron lo que vieron y mis oídos oyeron mi respiración y los sonidos que se sobreponían a ella.

the observer is, more often than not, passive. writing chiefly about his or her surroundings, and the people he or she meets. The writer reacts, instead of acts. Well, i suppose they [travel writers] do act, in that they have to do the traveling, choose the destinations, and so forth, but again, largely they are observant cargo, being shuttled from place to place with notebook in hand.

Subjectivity is just objectivity waiting for data

That being said, it's still not racist to observe that half of the homicides in America are committed by and against African Americans.

is magic in being in the present in your life. I'm always amazed at the power of clear observation simply about what's going on, what's true. Finding out the exact details of your personal finances, clarifying the historical data about the company you're buying, or getting the facts about who really said what to whom in an interpersonal conflict can be constructive, if not downright healing.

T]he last thing a fish notices is water.

There is a simple but profound principle that emerges from understanding the way your perceptive filters work: you won't see how to do it until you see yourself doing it.

Well, well," she murmurs as I back away. She makes a rectangle with her index fingers and thumbs and looks at my skin through it. "You're right," she says. "The boy's a living work of art.

She points at my chest. "And much more interestingly, what's that?" "Blood," I say. She gets her camera out.

He looked around at the others....They were all staring at their computers, or reading books or newspapers. Not one of them has noticed the weather. Maybe that's how the world was now....Everyone was so wrapped up in his or her own little world that no one ever really saw anything anymore.

had a way of looking one over without seeming to that any Secret Service agent would be proud of