Quotes About Observation

The man just stood there, looking at him; and Elliott had the weirdest sense of being listened to, studied. It made him aware of how inattentive most human beings were in general.

He glanced at me again, a flash of brilliant eyes and a smile that was gone in an instant as I looked back to the man in the chair.

I was thinking how very attractive he was, I couldn't stop myself, with his yellow hair so thick and long, turning so gracefully at the collar of his coat, and his large probing violet eyes. There are very few creatures on earth who have true violet eyes. The slight difference between his eyes meant nothing. His sun-browned skin was flawless. What he saw in me with his questioning gaze, I couldn't know.

Allow me to watch at the garden window in silence as you paint your walls.

Her eyes grew brighter and it seemed she looked about, as though absorbing the beauty of the walls.

We watch And we are always there.

Even if his eyes were dull as though the dazzling colors of my paintings did not matter to him, was he not near at hand?

and I thought I might take him home and see how he works. It's really neat the way all those little bone things fit together, like a zipper.

Have you not explained to your friend? She seems confused. I've told her what she needs to know. I would suspect, Nephew, that she needs to know more. Particularly when I see how you look at her. Taka gave another sudden start, but didn't turn. What did his uncle see when he looked at her? Murderous tendencies? Vast annoyance? Or something else? And she looks at you the same way, the old man added, and it was Summer's turn to jump. Definitely vast annoyance, then. And something else.

How could you think I wouldn't know you? he chided softly. I know the way you move, the way you bite your lip when you're nervous, the sound of your laughter, your eyes. I know your hands and your skin, your scent, the way you try to pretend that something doesn't bother you when you're very bothered indeed.

Liam really enjoyed a good movie. He found it restful to watch people's conversations without being expected to join in. But he always felt sort of lonesome if he didn't have someone next to him to nudge in the ribs at the good parts.

Sometimes, Kate was downright astonished by how much the women in the faculty lounge sounded like the little girls nattering away in Room 4. It

When you come [to a baseball game] in person, you direct your own focus, you know? The TV or the radio men, they might focus on the pitcher when you want to see what first base is doing; and you don't have any choice but to accept it.

Always have a purpose,' his father used to tell him. 'Act like you're heading someplace purposeful, and none of the low-life will mess with you.' He had also said, 'Never trust a man who starts his sentences with Frankly,' and 'Nine tenths of a good sidearm pitch is in the flick of the wrist,' and 'If you want to sell a person something, look off elsewhere as you're speaking, not straight into his eyes.

A Japanese man festooned with cameras, a nun, a young girl in braids.

Alice often liked to imagine that a book was being written about her life. A narrator with an authoritative male voice was describing her every act. "Alice sighed" was a frequent observation.

didn't paintings lie also? They showed hours instead of minutes.

In fact Alice was surprised to hear that her father had even noticed whether David went into the water or not, because he and Bentley liked to stand waist-deep with their arms folded across their chests and talk about sewage or something.

He drew the brush along the wood with dreamy strokes. Wasn't it interesting how the grain of the wood told a story, almost—how you could follow the threads and be surprised at how far they traveled, or where they unexpectedly broke off.

We are here to witness the creation and to abet it.

Admire the world for never ending on you -- as you would an opponent, without taking your eyes away from him, or walking away.

Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.

We are here to abet creation and to witness it, to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but we notice each other's beautiful face and complex nature so that creation need not play to an empty house.

Noticing and remembering everything would trap bright scenes to light and fill the blank and darkening past which was already piling up behind me. The growing size of that blank and ever-darkening past frightened me; it loomed beside me like a hole in the air and battened on scraps of my life I failed to claim. If one day I forgot to notice my life, and be damned grateful for it, the blank cave would suck me up entire.