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Quotes About Observation

We were walking toward the fountain, the epicenter of activity, when an older couple stopped and openly observed us. Robert enjoyed being noticed, and he affectionately squeezed my hand. "oh, take their picture," said the woman to her bemused husband, "I think they're artists." "Oh, go on," he shrugged. "They're just kids.
~ Patti Smith
Robert was concerned with how to make the photograph, and I with how to be the photograph.
~ Patti Smith
Despite all efforts, February just slips away, though being a leap year there is one extra day to observe.
~ Patti Smith
Oh take their picture," said the woman to her bemused husband, "I think they're artists." "Oh, go on," he shrugged. "They're just kids.
~ Patti Smith
There were no ashtrays and no sign of my philosophic cowpoke. I sensed he had been heading this way and most likely, spotting the spanking new paint job, just kept on going. I looked around. Nothing to hold me here, either, not even the dried carcass of a dead bee.
~ Patti Smith
the incisive observational powers of a female surgeon cutting out her own heart.
~ Patti Smith
Nobody sees as we do, Patti
~ Patti Smith
Will you take a picture? she said. I looked down at the bleak panorama and shook my head. How could I take a picture of nothing?
~ Patti Smith
In the green of the hills, he saw red.' p.13
~ Patti Smith
From my small terrace I caught the moment when drapes of cloud dropped upon the ground. I had never seen such a thing and lamented I was without film for my camera. On the other hand I was able to experience the moment completely unburdened.
~ Patti Smith
I wandered through Kino parlors and peered through the windows of the magnificent sprawling Grant's Raw Bar filled with men in black coats scooping up piles of fresh oysters.
~ Patti Smith
Mice lie and monkeys exaggerate," says University of Pennsylvania vaccine researcher David Weiner.
~ Paul A. Offit
Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour films, music, books, paintings, poems, photographs, conversations, dreams, trees, architecture, street signs, clouds, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work will be authentic.
~ Paul Arden
When you live in the city, you learn to take nothing for granted. Close your eyes for a moment, turn around to look at something else, and the thing that was before you is suddenly gone. Nothing lasts, you see, not even the thoughts inside you. And you mustn't waste your time looking for them. Once a thing is gone, that is the end of it.
~ Paul Auster
an exercise in the art of paying attention, and paying attention, Ferguson discovered, was the first step in learning how to be alive.
~ Paul Auster
The gods looked down from their mountain and shrugged.
~ Paul Auster
Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within.
~ Paul Auster
I hear her slip into bed with him, and I hear everything that happens after that. Sex is such a strange and sloppy business, why bother to recount every slurp and moan that ensued? Tom and Honey deserve their privacy, and for that reason I will end my report of the night's activities here. If some readers object, I ask them to close their eyes and use their imaginations.
~ Paul Auster
Si mantienes los ojos abiertos, siempre estarás perdido
~ Paul Auster
He read many books, he looked at paintings, he went to the movies. In the summer he watched baseball on television in the winter he went to the opera. More than anything else, however, what he liked to do was walk. Nearly every day, rain or shine, hot or cold, he would leave his apartment to walk through the city—never really going anywhere, but simply going wherever his legs happened to take him.
~ Paul Auster
jeu du regard,
~ Paul Auster
the protocols of such gatherings, the sophisticated hypocrisies of supposed art lovers coming to an art show in order to ignore the artworks on display,
~ Paul Auster
As the psychologist Steven Pinker puts it, "Exposure to worlds that can be seen only through the eyes of a foreigner, an explorer, or a historian can turn an unquestioned norm ('That's the way it's done') into an explicit observation ('That's what our tribe happens to do now')." This is the point that Herodotus was making when he told the story of the Greeks and the Indians.
~ Paul Bloom
The ordinary man is aware of his surroundings, first, by naming and labelling them; second, by linking them with past memory of them; and third, by relating them to his own personal self. The illumined egoless man is simply aware of them, without any of these other added activities.
~ Paul Brunton