Quotes About Observation

This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are.

But most of all, I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they are going.

The hot blue-glass eyes of the mannequins watched as the ladies drifted down the empty river bottom street, their images shimmering in the windows like blossoms seen under darkly moving waters.

The Mexican people, once they have happened on a good food, he thought, flay the thing to distraction. Ham and eggs every morning now for two weeks. Since arriving in Guanajuato, bearing his typewriter, it had been the same thing each morning at nine. He stared at his plate, gently grieved. (The Candy Skull)

The good writers touch life often.

Summer was over. Of course you can't tell in Los Angeles.

We'll just start walking today and see the world and the way the world walks around and talks, the way it really looks...And while none of it will be me when it goes in, after a while it'll all gather together inside and it'll be me.

Then, left alone, shivering, I happened to glance up. I stood, I froze, blinking up through the drift, the drift, the silent drift of blinding snow. I saw the high hotel windows, the lights, the shadows. What's it like up there? I thought. Are fires lit? Is it warm as breath? Who are all those people? Are they drinking? Are they happy? Do they even know I'm HERE?

On the front porch where she had come to weigh them quietly with her eyes, her quietness a condemnation, the woman stood motionless.

I think of her hands but I don't see them doing anything at all. They just hang there at her sides or they lay there on her lap or there's a cigarette in them, but that's all.

Usted no es como los demás. He visto a unos cuantos. Lo sé. Cuando hablo usted me mira. Anoche, cuando dije algo sobre la luna, usted la miró. Los otros nunca harían eso. Los otros se alejarían, dejándome con la palabra en la boca. O me amenazarían. Nadie tiene ya tiempo para nadie.

But I wanted to show what we all have in us, that it has always been there, and so few of us bother to notice. When people ask me where I get my ideas, I laugh. How strange - we are so busy looking out, to find ways and means, we forget to look in.

But most of all," she said, "I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they're going.

Or maybe he means in a richer world the begging population is melting away. But no to that too. So maybe, perhaps, he means there aren't many 'human beings' left to look, see, and understand well enough for one to ask and one to give. Everyone busy, running, jumping, there's no time to study one another. But I guess that's bilge and hogwash, slop and sentiment.

From now on I hope always to stay alert, to educate myself as best I can. But, lacking this, in future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind to see what it has observed when I thought I was sitting this one out.

I sometimes think drivers don't know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly, she said. If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! he'd say, that's grass! A pink blur! That's a rose garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows.

me gusta observar a la gente. A veces, me paso el día entero en el metro, y los contemplo, los escucho. Sólo deseo saber qué son, qué desean y adónde van. (...) A veces me deslizo a hurtadillas y escucho en el metro. O en las cafeterías. Y, ¿sabe qué? - ¿Qué? - La gente no habla de nada.

But Clarisse's favorite subject wasn't herself. It was everyone else, and me. She was the first person in a good many years I've really liked. She was the first person I can remember who looked straight at me as if I counted.

Llénate los ojos de asombro, vive como si fueses a morir en los próximos diez segundos. Observa el universo. Es más fantástico que cualquier sueño construido o pagado en una fábrica.

Mais surtout, j'aime observer les gens. Il m'arrive de passer toute une journée dans le métro à les regarder et à les écouter. Et vous savez quoi? _ Quoi? _ Les gens ne parlent de rien. (...) Ils citent une ribambelle de voitures, de vêtements et de piscines et ils disent: Super! Mais ils disent tous la même chose et personne n'est jamais d'un avis différent.

They lay blinking their dusty eyelids. ...Montag sat up. He did not move any further, however. The other men did likewise. The sun was touching the black horizon with a faint red tip.

It was a look, almost, of pale surprise; the dark eyes were so fixed to the world that no move escaped them.

Doesn't an old thing always know when a new thing comes?

He surveyed the lake of grass below, all the dandelions gone, a touch of rust in the trees, and the smell of Egypt blowing from the far east.