Quotes About Observation

I like the kind of man John is. He watches things closely and then does nothing with the information.

It was like seeing someone who wore a striped tie or parted his hair on the left — a detail, but not a telling one.

The crummy part of swimming is that while you're doing it you can't really see much: the bottom of the pool, certainly, a smudged and fleeting bit of the outside world as you turn your head to breathe. But you can't pick things out – a man's face, for example, watching from the sidelines when, for the first time in your life, you pull ahead and win.

Gambling to me is what a telephone pole might be to a groundhog. He sees that it's there but doesn't for the life of him understand why.

Randall, the gay alcoholic in the house next door, boldly peeps through my windows. 'Boy, you sure rock in that chair a lot,' he said last week, his face pressed against my screen. This time I was lying on my bed with Katherine's cats. I'm watching them while she's out of town. I can be very mushy, and he watched me kissing them and saying that all the other cats in the neighborhood were jealous of their beauty.

I think there is a difference between comic essays and war reporting, and people can tell that.

The Artist's impressions of a walk in the woods. The Artist's view on viewing. The Artist on Art. How do you get your ideas for stories, Mr. Valentine? Well, I simply exploit everything I come into contact with. One ended, of course, by losing all spontaneity. You saw people as characters, sunsets as an excuse for similes—

I should be used to the way Americans dress when traveling, yet it still manages to amaze me. It's as if the person next to you had been washing shoe polish off a pig, then suddenly threw down his sponge saying, "Fuck this. I'm going to Los Angeles!" On

Hugh claims the reason I've never seen one is that I'm not perceptive enough. This is his way of telling me that I'm self-centered, suggesting that if I weren't so concerned about, for example, meeting my daily Fitbit goal, I'd realize there's a six-hundred-year-old milkmaid living in our silverware drawer.

David Sedaris

Given all the time I've spent in the country, you'd think I might have seen a calf being born, but this was a first for me. The biggest surprise was how nonplussed the expectant mother was. For a while she lay flat on the grass, panting. Then she got up and began grazing, still with those feet sticking out. "Really?" I said to her. "You can't go five minutes without eating?

And there's no point in me doing anything if I can't write about it," I continued. "It would be like . . . walking ten miles without my Fitbit on—a complete waste. I mean, I do do things I don't write about: I use the bathroom, I have sex, but I try to be quick about it.

Pointing to the oversized crate that served as a manger, one particularly insufficient wise man proclaimed, "A child is bored." Yes, well, so was this adult.

She looked to me like a librarian is supposed to, slightly stern, with a longer-than-average neck.

That's the thing with a diary, though. In order to record your life, you sort of need to live it. Not at your desk, but beyond it. Out in the world where it's so beautiful and complex and painful that sometimes you just need to sit down and write about it.

At around five, I took the L home. A woman near me had a three-year-old child on her lap, a girl, who looked at me and said, "Mommy, I hate that man.

My job, always, was to hand him tools as he called for them and to hold the worklight, a bare bulb in an aluminum cage. It might have been different had I cared what a piston was, or were I interested in the proper consistency of cement. As it was, I never asked, and he never offered. Rather, I'd just stand there, my arm outstretched like a lawn jockey's.

Out in the world where it's so beautiful and complex and painful that sometimes you just need to sit down and write about it.

If he thinks we're bad, he should spend more time with Lisa." "That's true," I agreed. "Lisa's the master. I left her at a Starbucks for ninety seconds last year, and when I returned the woman behind the counter was saying to her, 'My gynecologist told me that exact same thing.

The two young women standing nearby had apparently listened in. "Give it to me," one of them said. She wore a lot of foundation, and her eyebrows qualified as drawings.

The camera has replaced actual looking and turned life into evidence. It drives me crazy. February 1, 2014

It was as if I'd learned to grieve by watching television:

Would the teacher take note of my bulging eyes or comment on the thin strand of saliva hanging like fishing wire from the corner of my mouth?

And there's no point in me doing anything if I can't write about it," I continued. "It would be like . . . walking ten miles without my Fitbit on—a complete waste. I mean, I do do things I don't write about: I use the bathroom, I have sex, but I try to be quick about it.