Quotes About Observation

Occasionally a yellow leaf fell from the tree. Then one or the other of us would turn up his eyes as though to see the leaf fall once again. We didn't wait for the next leaf, which fell a little later. Out eyes lacked the patience. We didn't commit ourselves to leaves. Only to flying splashes of yellow that distracted our faces from one another's

He's looking into the night, in case a shadow comes to listen and look.

Es ist gar keine Katze, sagte ich mir, nur die Verpelzung der graugestreiften Langeweile, die Geduld der Angst in einer schmalen Straße.

In duminica in care Irene l-a cunoscut pe Thomas, aparuse doar apropierea dintre privirea Irenei, care cauta urzici, si camasa verde de matase a lui Thomas.

I do a lot of counting. Cigarette butts, trees, fence slats, clouds, or the number of paving stones between one phone pole and the next, the windows along the way to the bus stop in the morning, the pedestrians I see from the bus between one stop and the next, red ties on an afternoon in the city. How many steps from the office to the factory gate. I count to keep the world in order, I said. Paul

Dos campos a aldeia parece um amontoado de casas entre as colinas, cuja planta só pode ser reconhecida através das cores. Tudo parece próximo, e quando nos aproximamos não chegamos lá. Eu nunca entendi essas distâncias. Eu sempre estava atrás dos caminhos, tudo corria à minha frente. Eu só tinha a poeira na face. E em lugar nenhum havia um fim.

En el camino me resultaba sospechoso que arriba, en el cielo, hubiera algo hermoso y en la tierra, abajo, no hubiera ninguna ley que prohibiese mirar a lo alto.

Lá no alto, sobre a cumeada, uma mancha compacta de sobretudos verde-escuros feitos de agulhas. Por baixo, rigorosamente alinhadas, até onde a vista alcança, as pernas de pau dos troncos, que param quando paras, andam quando andas e correm quando corres.

Heywood Broun

The field has eyes, the wood has ears. I want to see, to be silent and listen

It isn't a matter of how long, or even how much you know. It's a way of looking at things, how much you see and how you think. I suppose it's, well, perspective. . . When you start seein' five sides to a four-sided object, that's when you get the gray robe.

But Jeanie had just gone through the motions. No one would have realized, except perhaps her too-perceptive son-in-law, but that was one of the few perks of maturity: you knew how to dissemble.

For one never thinks of you alone, Cremuel, but in company, studying the faces of other people, as if you yourself mean to paint them. You make other men think, not "what does he look like?" but "what do I look like?

He is not a man wedded to action, Boleyn, but rather a man who stands by, smirking and stroking his beard; he thinks he looks enigmatic, but instead he looks as if he's pleasuring himself.

Richard goes with a bob of the head but without another word. It seems he interprets 'don't tell anybody' as 'don't tell anybody but Rafe', because ten minutes later Rafe comes in, and stands looking at him, with his eyebrows raised. Red-headed people can look quite strained when they are raising eyebrows that aren't really there.

He, Cromwell, watches. They are not the same couple from day to day: sometimes doting, sometimes chilly and distanced. The billing and cooing, on the whole, is the more painful to watch." 516

He would rather know what's outside, see the summer in its sad blowing wreckage, than cower behind the blind and wonder what the damage is". - Thomas Cromwell - Wolf Hall

I went back to the door of Georges's study and pushed it open. He and Camille were sitting at either side of the empty fireplace, not speaking, just staring into each other's faces. "Am I interrupting you?" "No," Camille said, "we were just staring into each other's faces. I hope you weren't discomfitted by what you heard when you were listening at the door just now?

Try always, Wolsey says, to find out what people wear under their clothes.

As the combatants will always tell you, you really needed to see it, you had to be there. . .

Rose had the sort of eyes that manage perfectly well with things close by, but entirely blur out things far away. Because of this even the brightest stars had only appeared as silvery smudges in the darkness. In all her life, Rose had never properly seen a star. Tonight there was a sky full. Rose looked up, and it was like walking into a dark room and someone switching on the universe.

Michael allowed himself to look at Caddy for the first time since she had climbed into the car. It was a moment that he always put off for as long as possible because his concentration was never quite the same afterwards.

I'd look on as old men walked down city streets arm in arm with their wives. I would watch babies resting on their mothers' bellies in patches of grass and sunlight in Central Park. I would watch cigarette-smoking teenagers glittering with meanness and youth, whispering and laughing as they shopped on lower Broadway. These exchanges of intimacy were all the same to me because they excluded me [...]

first, the countenance of the patient, if it be like those of persons in health, and more so, if like itself, for this is the best of all; whereas the most opposite to it is the worst, such as the following; a sharp nose, hollow eyes, collapsed temples; the ears cold, contracted, and their lobes turned out: the skin about the forehead being rough, distended, and parched; the color of the whole face being green, black, livid, or lead-colored.