Quotes About Observation

Just follow my first rule of life, Dan said as he got out of the Jeep. Everybody's gotta eat. … How did you know a guy named Joe worked here? Amy asked as they dropped the food bags on a table. That's my second rule of life, Dan said. There's always a guy named Joe.

Lovely, Nellie whispered. A double-crosser wouldn't spend all this time gardening and planting flowers, would they? ... Sinead Starling opened the door. Ah, Nellie said. I guess I was wrong.

pay attention everything counts

Miss Manners corrects only upon request. Then she does it from a distance, with no names attached, and no personal relationship, however distant, between the corrector and the correctee. She does not search out errors like a policeman leaping out of a speed trap. When Miss Manners observes people behaving rudely, she behaves politely to them, and then goes home and snickers about them afterward.

Lauren was still studying the mobile line of his lips when they quirked suddenly, as if amusement was lurking tere.Her gaze shot up, and to her utter horror she discovered that his gray eyes had shifted to her. Lauren was torn between laughing at his dry observation and blushing because she hadn't fooled him in the least. She did neither, and instead carefully kept her eyes on the elevator doors until they opened on the eightieth floor.

Has anyone ever told you that you have incredibly beautiful eyes? Yes, and you're prevaricating! And that you're extremely well-spoken, too? he continued, ignoring her remark.

You're rather young, Miss Danner, Mary summarized, her pale blue gaze scraping Lauren's face and figure. I'm aging quickly, Laruen replied. Ignoring the older woman's piercing look, she settled into the secretarial desk opposite Mary's in the large officec.

my father. "Oh, it's so quaint," she said. "Isn't it quaint

Ralph arrived first. He's really fat. And he isn't even four years old. He doesn't say much either. He grunts and grabs a lot, though. Usually his mouth is stuffed full of something.

Robin . . . robin . . ." Uncle Feather repeated.

I wonder what it's like watching ladies try on underwear all day? I'd really like to get a look at that!

Before the play begins, observe the theater.

He looks out on a raging battlefield and sees error everywhere, and he thinks he can find the truth by avoiding error. —Lerone Bennett, "Tea and Sympathy: Liberals and Other White Hopes," 1964

Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.

Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.

The eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.

Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.

No puede tenerse una vida plena en mente sin libros y tiempo para estudiarlos, sin oportunidad para viajar y observar o sin compañerismo intelectual.

A person cannot live fully in mind without books and time to study them, without opportunity for travel and observation, or without intellectual companionship. To live fully in mind, one must have intellectual recreations and must be surrounded by all objects of art and beauty one is capable of using and appreciating.

at times expressing his conviction that literature and music were being absorbed by television, which was turning people into voyeurs.

By his very profession, a serious fiction writer is a vendor of the sensuous particulars of life, a perceiver and handler of things. His most valuable tools are his sense and his memory; what happens in his mind is primarily pictures.

Henry James says somewhere that if you have to make notes on how a thing has struck you, it probably hasn't struck you.

I had stopped my chair at that exact place, coming out, because right there the spice of wisteria that hung around the house was invaded by the freshness of apple blossoms in a blend that lifted the top of my head. As between those who notice such things and those who don't, I prefer those who do.

After a day and a half or so the traveler will realize that crossing the continent by Interstate he gets to know the country about as well as a cable messenger knows the sea bottom.