Quotes About Observation

The eyes that saw too much because they did not close enough.

what we can see may constitute no more than 10 percent, and perhaps as little as 1 percent, of the matter in the universe.

For the first time, I saw my behavior from someone else's point of view.

I must admit that I haven't heard of the Duchess of Erat before. You're a fortunate man, Wolf said. She's a great beauty, the man said admiringly. And has a temper to match, Wolf told him. I noticed that, the guard said. We noticed you noticing, Silk told him slyly.

If there's a noise in the woods, and there's nobody around to hear it, is it really a noise? Of course it is, she replied calmly. How did you reach that conclusion? Beldin demanded. Because there's no such thing as an empty place, uncle. There are always creatures around --wild animals, mice, insects, birds --and they can all hear. But what if there weren't? What if the woods are truly empty? Why waste your time talking about an impossibility?

Raphael watched, and gradually he began to understand them. At first it was not even a theory, but rather a kind of intuition. He found that he could look at any one of them and almost smell the impending crisis. That was the key word—crisis. At first it seemed too dramatic a term to apply to situations resulting from their bumbling mismanagement of their lives or deliberate wrongheaded stupidity, but they themselves reacted as if these situations were in fact crises.

It keeps him happy, Dahlaine, and happy people are nicer than gloomy ones. Haven't you noticed that before?

It is next to impossible to learn a complex skill by observation alone. One does not learn to play the violin by watching Heifitz or the piano by observing Rubenstein.

This wise old whiskery fish swims up to three young fish and goes, 'Morning, boys, how's the water?' and swims away; and the three young fish watch him swim away and look at each other and go, 'What the fuck is water?' and swim away.

If Realism called it like it saw it, Metafiction simply called it as it saw itself seeing itself see it.

He didn't reject the idea so much as not react to it and watch as it floated away. He thought very broadly of desires and ideas being watched but not acted upon, he thought of impulses being starved of expression and dying out and floating dryly away.

He knew what the Beats know and what the great tennis player knows, son: learn to do nothing, with your whole head and body, and everything will be done by what's around you.

This is what people call a view. And you knew that from below you wouldn't look nearly so high overhead. You see now how high overhead you are. You knew from down there no one could tell . . . There's been time this whole time. You can't kill time with your heart. Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still.

That other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid.

If you really look at something, you can almost always tell what type of wage structure the person who made it was on.

I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies.

But what of Lenore, of Lenore's hair? Here is hair that is clearly within and of itself every color—blond and red and jet-black-blue and honeynut—but which effects an outward optical compromise with possibility that consists of appearing simply dull brown, save for brief teasing glimpses out of the corner of one's eye.

He just sits there. I want to be like that. Able to just sit all quiet and pull life toward me, one forehead at a time. His name is supposedly Lyle.

As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.

It'll help your attitude to look for evidence of design.

I can remember hearing one middle-aged man who sat nearby saying 'Simmer down, boyo' to another older man seated kitty-corner to me across the doorway to one of the hallways extending out from the waiting area, except when I looked up from the book both these men were staring straight ahead, expressionless, with no sign of anyone needing to 'simmer down' in any conceivable way.

The doctor gazed at her with a patience she was meant to see.

Imagine the day after the Berlin Wall came down if everybody in East Germany was plump and comfortable-looking and dressed in Caribbean pastels, and you'll have a pretty good idea what the Fort Lauderdale Airport terminal looks like today.

other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid.