Quotes About Observation

The baby girl was quite still except for her cheeks and lips sucking at her finger, and a rhythmical curving and straightening of her toes, as if some current of thick air were passing over them.

Bright green eyes, long lashes, and a chiseled body. The combination is enough that even I, the notoriously sexless Rayne Garner, had to take notice.

It is easy to know when a government wishes for peace by observing the character of the person sent to negotiate for it.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

It is a mistake, too, to say that the face is the mirror of the soul. The truth is, men are very hard to know, and yet, not to be deceived, we must judge them by their present actions, but for the present only.

When your opponent is making a mistake, do nothing to interfere.

Writers live twice. They go along with their regular life, are as fas as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning. But there's another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives every second at a time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it. Looks at the texture and details.

I wonder if I don't give too much of myself to writing: I am always half where I am; the other half is feeding the furnace, kick-starting the heat of creativity. I am making love with someone but at the same time I'm noticing how this graceful hand across my belly might just fit in with the memory of lilacs in Albuquerque in 1974.

Basically, if you want to become a good writer, you need to do three things. Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot. And don't think too much. Just enter the heat of words and sounds and colored sensations and keep your pen moving across the page. If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.

I had to get slow and dumb (not take anything for granted) and watch and see how everything connects, how you contact your thoughts and lay them down on paper.

Give me your morning. Breakfast, waking up, walking to the bus stop. Be as specific as possible. Slow down in your mind and go over the details of the morning.

How to generate writing ideas, things to write about? Whatever's in front of you is a good beginning. Then move out into all streets. You can go anyplace. Tell me everything you know. Don't worry if what you know you can't prove or haven't studied.

We have lived! Our moments are important. This is what it is to be a writer: to be the carrier of details that make up history.

Basically, if you want to become a good writer, you need to do three things: read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot. And don't think too much. Just enter the heat of words and sounds and coloured sensation and keep your pen moving across the page.

Tell about the quality of light coming in through your window. Jump in and write. Don't worry if it is night and your curtains are closed or you would rather write about the light up north—just write. Go for ten minutes, fifteen, a half hour.

Write in different places—for example, in a laundromat, and pick up on the rhythm of the washing machines. Write at bus stops, in cafés. Write what is going on around you.

A writer's job is to make the ordinary come alive, to awaken ourselves to the specialness of simply being

Basically, if you want to become a good writer, you need to do three things. Read a lot, listen well and deeply, and write a lot. And don't think too much. Just enter the heat of words and sounds and colored sensations and keep your pen moving across the page. If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.

Ninety percent of writing is about listening.

When you draw and pay attention to what is, it's a form of being present. This inspires the mind, makes it happy, and the heart wants to express more.

I think I intuitively suspected that perspective would put me outside the painting. I didn't want that. I wanted to get close to those tables and chairs, to jump in and feel myself dancing with them, even as I sat drawing them. I didn't want things to lie down; I wanted them to come forward, to beckon and call, to be noticed on the paper as I was noticing them in real life. I wanted the viewer to have a direct connection with the objects, to feel as happy as I was in their presence.

There are movies where we are interested in seeing people's lives without agreeing with what they're doing.

Going to a party, for me, is as much a learning experience as, you know, sitting in a lecture.

When we were upset as little girls, Dad used to say, "Let's go to the window and see if we see anyone as unhappy as we are." And he would lead us to the window, where we'd watch people pass by in the street until we cheered up.