Quotes About Observation

Atkins knows two kinds of birds: seagulls and the ones that aren't seagulls.

For a poet the world is always static in the sense that you're a mass observer and you can't afford to care whether people are busy or not. You're a witness.

The German sociologist Niklas Luhmann once observed that the simple act of asking yourself, "Where did I put my keys?" performs unexpected magic: it transforms the world into a catalog of possible key locations.1 Under the couch, somewhere the dog or the baby moved

the first place you go blind is in the eyes

If you never bothered to to look or see anything much you wouldn't be worrying' "I'd have to be very dumb to be like that" "Then be dumb, see nothing, hear nothing

I looked back towards them, to see if they were watching me, and saw her pulling her arm from his grip. Her eyes were closed and her hair was all over the places and her face was screwed up.

the very phenomenon being investigated may be changed by the inquiry itself. It is as if there were a principle of human indeterminacy at work.

I think writers, by nature, are more observers instead of participators.

But there is a truth here; seeing is magical. Looking kills. The longer I looked, the more the magic faded.

Everyone has a camera on their phone and no one sees UFOs anymore.

She had almost tripped over him as he watched the drops fall with idiot fascination. Somehow she could not hurry past with a brief flicker of nona dolorosa to indicate her annoyance

Something about him made her watch him, his big hands held out to receive the falling drops, alms of heaven, catching them in his mouth, smiling as they streamed down his face, his chin, his cheeks. Her heart sent her one way. Her feet sent her another

Sometimes he irritated her so much that she wanted to throw him back to the rain. The way he sat, the way he watched; watched, watched; what? Rain. And his questions, his utter and absolute ignorance.

Something about him made her watch him, his big hands held out to receive the falling drops, alms of heaven, catching them in his mouth, smiling as they streamed down his face, his chin, his cheeks. Her heart sent her one way. Her feet sent her another, splashing across the street to his side.

Faces, places … such and such a face appeared at such and such a place, such and such a face disappeared at such and such a place, such and such a face was always in the third seat from the left when she got on, such and such a face was always hanging from the strap by the door when she got off … same faces, same places. But not today! Today those faces are two hours behind Courtney Hall, it's different faces today, let's have a look at them, what do we see?

he looked up and around him in awe and amazement. And saw the faces in the architecture.

only one man was left in Neu Ulmsbad Square to watch the black and silver pantycars come tunneling out of the clouds. "Is this part of it?" asked the man called Kilimanjaro West.

If you want to write, you must write experience. What it is to be that thing. There is everything in a moment.

He is a gross man-mountain balanced on strangely tiny feet. Not fat, vast.

I apologize for being obvious, but every time I watch the curtain come down on even a halfway decent production of a Shakespeare play I feel a little sorrowful that I'll never know the man, or any man of such warm intelligence.

You can tell a lot from a person's nails. When a life starts to unravel, they're among the first to go.

If that woman looks like a million dollars and puts it right in your face, that one you get away from," R.D. told him. "That one in the corner who is quiet? That's the one you go after.

went to take a look at it. A plaque

like we're hanging on your every brilliant deduction.