Quotes About Observation

I love to sit and watch people. I love to sit and listen to people.

Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself.

I love running cross-country...You come up a hill and see two deer going, 'What the hell is he doing?' On a track I feel like a hamster.

The Vikings could have been saved if they had borrowed survival strategies from the Inuit, but the only record we have of contact between the two peoples is the remark from a Viking settler that the Inuit bleed a lot when stabbed - an observation that hardly indicates a willingness to learn from their northern neighbors.

Me, I'm dishonest, and you can always trust a dishonest man to be dishonest. Honestly, it's the honest ones you have to watch out for.

The other dolls sat upon the shelf and looked straight before them, for it would never do to let grown-up men know that dolls were really alive.

Silent is an anagram of listen.

I stare out at the real world projected on the windows

I don't see big subjects as separate from little ones. Yes, you could trudge through life with great human tragedies played out before your eyes without ever taking notice. Or you could see a universe in the smallest thing. The way a person takes their coffee, for example, might say something profound and important about that person, about all humanity, about existence itself.

Sit here long enough you get to know everything. You listen, see ?" She taps the side of her head. "Nobody listens any more. Everyone knows what they want to hear, but nobody actually listens.

She'd read somewhere that you only truly saw what someone looked like in the first few minutes of meeting them, that after then it was only an impression, colored by what you thought of them.

I like the breath of foreign air, the close-up glimpses of lives far removed from my own. I liked to hear the accents and work out where their owners came from, to study the clothes of people who have never seen a Next catalog or bought a five-pack of knickers at Marks and Spencer.

Here's the thing about middle-class people. They pretend not to look, but they do. They're too polite to actually stare. Instead, they do this weird thing of catching sight of Will in their field of vision and then determinedly not looking at him. Until he's gone past, at which point their gaze flickers toward him, even while they remain in conversation with someone else. They won't talk about him, though. Because that would be rude.

I thought he was the saddest person I had ever met, in those moments when I glimpsed him staring out the window.

It was not, they observed with exquisite understatement, a cry for help.

Dean Martin growled at me, as if in agreement. I was going to say something else but trying to work out which of his eyes was actually looking at me was weirdly distracting.

She'd read somewhere that you only truly saw what someone looked like in the first few minutes of meeting them, that after then it was only an impression, coloured by what you thought of them.

It's quite hard to stay calm and understanding when you see the same faces, the same mistakes made again and again.

You were reading my Flannery O'Connor the other day." He took a sip of his drink. "When I was ill." "The short stories? I can't believe you noticed that." "I couldn't help but notice. You left the book out on the side. I can't pick it up." "Ah." "So don't read rubbish. Take the O'Connor stories home. Read them instead." I

she would catch the gesture: she always had

I often ordered chips, just so that I could watch them all pretend they didn't want one.

She didn't actually criticize me—she was too genteel even to raise her voice—but the way she blinked slowly at my responses, her little hmm-hmm, as I spoke, told me everything I needed to know.

for giving me such a clear window into these very specific worlds.

Here's the thing about middle-class people. They pretend not to look, but they do. They were too polite to actually stare. Instead, they did this weird thing of catching sight of Will in their field of vision and then determinedly not looking at him. Until he'd gone past, at which point their gaze would flicker towards him, even while they remained in conversation with someone else. They wouldn't talk about him, though. Because that would be rude.