Quotes About Observation

Benzel had a way of looking at people that let them know he was really looking at them. He was several inches taller than my parents, but he made sure to sit at eye level. He turned his seat away from the computer and planted himself directly in front of them. He did not twitch or fidget or even react when my father talked. He had that midwesterner's habit of waiting a beat after people have spoken before speaking himself, in order to see if they are really done.

On another occasion

What he found was unsurprising.

The most striking aspect of the program, it seemed to me, was that

he didn't understand why I hadn't called him when there were clear signs of airway trouble developing.

I asked him if I could have a look around.

The price of privilege is eternal vigilance.

Strange how much simple wisdom there is to be found in the deformed head and unprepossessing carcase of your typical London cabbie.

At the Serima Mission, in Victoria Province, I am shown around by an enchantingly pretty African nun called Sister Balbina...She cannot be more than 25, and has the most delightful figure. How poignant that she should have dedicated her life in this way. When we come to the bell tower, I ask her to climb up the ladder in front of me.It was rather a caddish request, I suppose, but I had often wondered. Black petticoats and pink knickers. To think I had to come all this way to find out.

You always learn from observing. You have to pick things up nonverbally because people will never tell you what you're supposed to know. You have to get it for yourself: whatever it is that you need in order to survive. You become strong by doing the things you need to be strong for. This is the way genuine learning takes place.

ÅžtiÅ£i cum se v?d cei înst?riÅ£i priviÅ£i de jos? Nu, nu ÅŸtiÅ£i! Ca ulii ÅŸi ca ÅŸoimii, a c?ror spate nu-l z?rim decât rareori, fiindc? ei zboar? aproape tot timpul acolo sus!

handsome people are always interesting to watch. But a handsome person in crisis is riveting.

To me, these people were as exotic as animals in a zoo. I'd never seen anything like them. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to be one of them or simply live among them taking notes and photographs.

Fact: upon locking yourself our of your apartment you will immediately need to use the bathroom. Fact: and then you will stand in place and watch your door. You will just stare. As though rebuffed by it. As though it has done this to you.

I gazed around the room and my eyes stopped dead on a little boy standing in the corner. This was a particularly eerie doll. Life-sized and blond-haired and blue-eyed. I saw a little Nazi boy, pockets probably stuffed with scissors and retractable blades. My grandfather on my mother's side was rumored to be half Jewish, which practically makes me Jerry Seinfeld's brother, and thus wary of blond German boys with their hands out of sight.

Dennis looked at the puppy in the window. We both did. It was the oddest thing. Normally, puppies in pet store windows sleep or pee or roll around on top of other dogs. This one ignored us its window-mates and was instead sitting with its nose pressed against the glass, looking at us with an extremely serious little expression on its face. An expression that seemed to me to be saying, I am a sacred cow. Get out your wallet.

I saw a monkey walking on a leash and thought it was an ugly foreign child.

I love her handbag. Inside are papers and her wallet and cigarettes and at the bottom, where she never looks, there is loose change, loose mints, specs of tobacco from her cigarettes. Sometimes I bring the bag to my face, open it and inhale as deeply as I can.

His eyes are so clear and blue that nothing but clichés enter my mind.

I mean, handsome people are always interesting to watch. But a handsome person in crisis is riveting.

Was it a universal truth that the closer you looked at something, the more you would see but the less you would understand what you where looking at?

Basically, he liked anything until it harmed him and then he was wary. All creatures in life had an equal chance with my brother, from terrier to psychotherapist. Those that impressed him with an especially keen mental ability, an amusing trick or had a large portion of food to offer would gain his favor. If my brother could find nothing of value to the person, he would dismiss them entirely.

SEEING THE TRUTH MEANS looking at everything for the first time, every time.

Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it. —Jules Renard, 1890