Quotes About Observation

When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea.

I have seen one shrike occupy himself for hours in sticking up on thorns, a number of small fishes that the fishermen had thrown on the shore. The fishes dried up and decayed.

I was a very shy girl who led an insulated life; it was only when I came to Oxford, and to Harvard before that, that suddenly I saw the power of people. I didn't know such a power existed, I saw people criticising their own president; you couldn't do that in Pakistan - you'd be thrown in prison.

Fix your eye on the ball from the moment the pitcher holds it in his glove. Follow it as he throws to the plate and stay with it until the play is completed. Action takes place only where the ball goes.

Short fiction is like low relief. And if your story has no humor in it, then you're trying to look at something in the pitch dark. With the light of humor, it throws what you're writing into relief so that you can actually see it.

Peyton Manning, you look at his physical abilities, there are a lot of things that are middle of the road. But his mastery of the data allows him to be ahead. I love watching him because he throws the ball so proactively.

I found there's a fairly blatant racism in America that's already there, and I don't think I noticed it when I lived here as a kid. But when I went back to South Africa, and then it's sort of thrust in your face, and then came back here - I just see it everywhere.

I put up my thumb and it blotted out the planet Earth.

I know plenty of people who live in the country who have never seen a badger. They are definitely there, but these nocturnal delights remain elusive, and thus are still a thrill.

Thus the same object may supply a practical perception to one person and a speculative one to another, or the same person may perceive it partly practically and partly speculatively.

Thus there is no doubt the eye was intended for us to see with.

My biggest job really is to figure other people out. I need to understand what makes a person tick.

It takes time to know what makes an individual player tick.

Doing comedy around the world is a way of finding out how people tick.

It's not an Israeli model, it's a TSA, screwed-up model. It should actually be the person who's looking at the ticket and talking to the individual. Instead, they've hired people to stand around and observe, which is a bastardization of what should be done.

The best is to go into a train station that I've built and buy a ticket. The guy in the ticket booth might recognize me, which is a marvelous feeling, but it might be that he doesn't and I go in like any other passenger, except that I enter with a critical eye, looking to see how it's held up.

Don't you think it's something strange that you rarely look at yourself in the mirror, except to do things like stand and ponder? I mean, in Shakespeare's day, it was thought that the mirror would reveal something, that it is trying to tell you something - not just to tidy your hair, but something more.

No one who hired Siegfried & Roy was shocked when they brought a tiger onstage. So you shouldn't be shocked if you book a comedian and she points out that the emperor has no clothes.

When I was writing 'The White Tiger' I lived in a building pretty much exactly like the one I described in this novel, and the people in the book are the people I lived with back then. So I didn't have to do much research to find them.

When I'm watching any game, I watch the tight end.

I normally raise pre-flop with K-K or A-A but occasionally I'll limp in, especially if it appears that the others at the table are playing tight. I don't want anyone to fold too soon when I've got such a big hand.

You look tight on camera, it sees it. The camera can see everything.

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.

You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.