Quotes About Observation

You see things, you keep quiet about them and you understand.

I put the book down and went to the window. I stared at my reflection and the trees behind it for a long time. Not thinking anything. Not hearing the record.

What are the two types of people who can see things that aren't there, Kate? And his quiet whisper of a punch line. Visionaries and psychopaths.

I was in the shopping mall because that's where I go lately. For the last couple of weeks. I've been going there every day, trying to figure out why people go there. It's kind of a personal project.

I saw other people there. Old men sitting alone. Young girls with blue eye shadow and awkward jaws. Little kids who looked tired. Fathers in nice coats who looked even more tired. Kids working behind the counters of the food places who looked like they hadn't had the will to live for hours. The machines kept opening and closing. The people kept giving money and getting their change. And it all felt very unsettling to me.

I look at people holding hands in the hallways, and I try to think about how it all works. At the school dances, I sit in the background, and I tap my toe, and I wonder how many couples will dance to "their song." In the hallways, I see the girls wearing the guys' jackets, and I think about the idea of property. And I wonder if anyone is really happy. I hope they are. I really hope they are.

very very pretty green eyes. The kind of green that doesn't make a big deal about itself.

Things like waking around the neighbourhood and looking at the houses and the lawns and the colourful trees and having that be enough.

Ves cosas, guardas silencio y entiendes. Eres un marginad

So, I stood alone by the wall and watched the dance for a while. I would describe it to you, but I think it's the kind of thing where you have to be there or at least know the people. But then again, maybe you knew the same people when you went to high school dances, if you know what I mean.

Little kids talk about the strangest things. They really do.

That's not a religion, that's Pokemon.

None of them knew the color of the sky.

Nevertheless, he had, on a certain star-lit evening, said wonderingly and quite reverently: Deh moon looks like hell, don't it?

I like the people. But, considered generally, they are a collection of ingenious blockheads.

The dead man and the living man exchanged a long look. Then the youth cautiously put one hand behind him and brought it against a tree. Leaning upon this he retreated, step by step, with his face still toward the thing. He feared that if he turned his back the body might spring up and stealthily pursue him.

No man can observe you as I have observed you and not know that it was a matter of conscience with you, but I am afraid, my friend, that it is one of the blunders of virtue. The

I am someone who has spent his adult life on the periphery of literature in the way that a small animal will remain just beyond the glow of the campfire, observing the strange doings of the human creatures settling in for the night.

the conflicts made him an indecisive mediator - a man, as someone had once observed, who couldn't keep his feet out of the shit on either side because he couldn't get the fencepost out of his ass.

Arnold said, "Poetry should be a criticism of life

and see a fire burning in town.

Self-consciousness, that's what it is. Always my abiding vice. I keep seeing myself. Me watching myself watching others watch me. How do you lose that? What's the trick?

A Hungarian Jew, as he looked to observe, is the only man who can follow you into a revolving door and come out first.

So perhaps we are all hypocrites. We damn others for what we fear as faults in ourselves. We rehearse the shortcomings of 'people' as a means of warding off the evil spirits that threaten us. It is certainly observable that those who most notice another's excessive drinking, for instance, are those most worried about their own habit.