Quotes About Observation

I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or TV show.

Our room overlooks the parking lot, and if I peek out from behind the stiff beige curtains

I did not believe in evil as an active force, only as a matter of viewpoint, yet I had seen enough to make me question my philosophy.

But she noticed that some of the people who had spoken to her before made a point of having something else to do with their eyes when she passed, although she could almost feel them staring at her back as she moved on.

Come on, who saw what happened? I did, I volenteered. Well? Buttwipe wanted to know what jerkface was looking at. I turned turned eyes on the bloody and dirt-smeared brawlers. You were barely 3-inches apart. Couldn't you see that you were both looking at each other? The teacher's face reddened. Who do you think you are? Jerry Seinfeld? You must be confused with another student, I told him. My name is Capricorn Anderson.

If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.

Noah stepped forward for a closer look. "If it's a girl," he said finally, "then what's that?" And we could all see exactly what he was pointing at.

My dad always uses this expression: If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.

If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck." Well, that isn't always true. It looks like Ambrose, and it talks like Ambrose. But no way that's Ambrose.

about an hour, Malik watching through the sunroof, following every move the chopper makes overhead. "It's

We grow through listening, aggressive listening: asking questions, watching intently what is happening around us, taking note of the good or ill consequences that befall people as a result of their choice making.

Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art.

I say his version because there is no such thing as a true account of anything. Each sees the world from his own vantage point. Needless to say, a throne is not the best place from which to view anything except the backs of prostrate men.

I have never been an eavesdropper, even in childhood. Not from any sense of virtue but because I really do not want to know what people think of me or, to be precise, what they say of me - often a different matter. I can usually imagine the unpleasant judgements, for we are what others needs us to be. That is why our reputations change so often and so drastically, reflecting no particular change in us, merely a change in the mood of those who observe us.

Movies were not there simply to reflect life or tell stories but to exist in their own autonomous way and to look, as it were, back at those who made them and watched them.

When you visualized a man or a woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity . . . that was a quality God's image carried with it . . . when you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.

For writers it is always said that the first twenty years of life contain the whole of experience – the rest is observation

It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.

If ash-trays could speak, sir.' 'Indeed, yes.

Pyle could see pain when it was in front of his eyes. (I don't write that as a sneer; there are so many of us who can't)

tea. He watched her while she made it, made it, of course, all wrong: the water not on the boil, the teapot unheated, too few leaves. She said, I never quite understand why English people like teas so.

The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see - every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.

I am interested in the blueness of the cheese.

I ought to write funny books. Life is really too horribly funny, but unless one`s an outsider looking on, it`s all such a bore.