Quotes About Observation

I'd never been in love, never felt that surge of feeling or that fall from its graces. I'd only watched as others weathered it: my mother in her garden, Sumner on the front lawn all those years ago, Ashley sobbing from the other side of a wall. I sat kerbside with my best friend and held her, trying to shoulder some of the hurt. There's only so much you can do, in these situations.

Mayonnaise," Morgan said, "is a lot like men.

I'd just never really taken the time to picture it. It was like when you're a little kid and you run into your teacher or librarian at the grocery store or Wal-Mart and it's just so startling, because it never occurred to you they existed outside of school.

All I could think was that here, finally, for once, I wasn't only watching and reporting but part of this moving, changing world as well.

I was here, too. But all my life I felt like an observer than an active participant. It was safer there but could be lonely too, or so I was now realizing. Maybe there was a middle ground between living too hard and living at all. Maybe, here, I was finding it.

God always seeth man from heaven and the angels report to Him every hour.

I hate to be a nag, but you have got to read. Like most authors, I run creative writing workshops from time to time, and speak, when invited to writers' circles and at summer schools, and I'm continually amazed at the number of would-be writers who scarcely read. For ideas to germinate and proliferate there has to be fertile ground to sow them in, and for the ground to be fertile it must be mulched with observation, imagination, and other writing.

Jack] checked his watch, then returned to studying her back. damn if she didn't have a nice back, too - smooth, unblemished skin, nicely shaped vertebrae- He pulled himself up short. Nicely shaped vertebrae? Was he going insane?

he ducked his head around the corner he saw that he

noticed, it seemed as if the wagon had expanded overnight. She paused to

Excuse me," Sebastian told Tip. "Not only can I hear your whisper, but I can see the sound waves of your whisper. They're a very pale green color, like the pee of an extremely sick person.

I'm staring at Snow White. The real Snow White. I'm in her living room.

You have to notice the truth in order to be able to avoid it.

Doc didn't have a television but he could predict that sort of thing. He just didn't need one. He could always tell what was on TV when he heard more than two people in a row say the same strange phrase in the same way. He knew that they had just seen it on television. A few weeks later everyone would have those words written on their chests.

Then, as if getting blown up is not enough to worry about, after I take a seat on the steps, I get a look at the choir. Thirty singers and from where I'm sitting, it looks like only two of them are black. It's not like I'm saying suburban white people shouldn't sing. Because I love Van Halen's "Hot for Teacher.

Ik krijg niet de indruk dat de Autodidact zin heeft om te praten. Wat kijkt hij me vreemd aan: hij kijkt niet om iets te zien, maar om een soort zielsgemeenschap tot stand te brengen. De ziel van de Autodidact is omhooggestegen en in in zijn fraaie, nietsziende ogen aan de oppervlakte gekomen. Hij wil dat mijn ziel hetzelfde doet, dat ze haar neus tegen de ruiten zal drukken: dan kunnen onze zielen beleefdheden uitwisselen.

Our job as a writer is to represent the world and to bear witness to it.

His mind took one of its odd jumps. He opened a clean page in his grimy notebook, and in the twig-divided shade of a wild cherry, infested with tent caterpillars, he began to make notes for a poem.

But i am a prisoner of perception, a compulsory witness.

On the simplest level he could tell you in detail what he felt—what effects an aspirin had on him, what it did to the back of his neck or the inside of his mouth. I was curious about this, because for the life of them most people can't describe what goes on inside. Alcoholics or druggies are too confused, hypochondriacs are their own terrorists, and most of us are aware only of a metabolic uproar within.

But fathers are soft on daughters. Look how Dad favors Angela. He gave her ten times more. Because she reminded him of Mae West. He was always smiling at her boobs. He wasn't aware of it. Mother and I saw it.

Rubin, the man at the newsstand, had poor eyes. They may not have been actually weak but they were poor in expression, with lacy lids that furled down at the corners.

Search me, I said. I'm a city boy myself. They must be crocuses.

In every direction, the walls of life are tiled with such facts so that you can never account for them all, only note some of the more conspicuous ones.