Quotes About Observation

But Schrödinger said that the cat isn't actually alive or dead unless and until the man outside opens the box to see that the cat is alive or dead." Nico thought that over. "You could listen to hear if it's purring." Frans

By the time we got to Ferrington, I was laughing at Will's stories about Rockpoint High. It seemed the kids gave the teachers a hard time; they were always cutting up and saying funny things. Will was good at imitating their Down-East accents, but I had a feeling Susan was right about his not having any friends. It was as though Will spent most of his school day watching and listening.

By the time we got to Ferrington, I was laughing at Will's stories about Rockpoint High. It seemed the kids gave the teachers a hard time; they were always cutting up and saying funny things. Will was good at imitating their Down-East accents, but I had a feeling Susan was right about his not having any friends. It sounded as if he spent most of his school day watching and listening.

Her mouth smiled, smiled hard, but her eyes did not smile, ever. Her eyes watched and looked for something they knew they'd never find.

I watched voyeuristically, knowing I was peeping at people in the middle of a collective dream. I imagined myself among them, part of the regimental dance, the teacher's rosy heat, the huge mobile hope of happiness and vitality. And as I watched, it suddenly occurred to me I had been merely watching the world all my life.

Nou ja, je weet zelf hoe het is. Je hebt me vaak genoeg vijf verschillende japonnen op een dag zien dragen. Denk je dat je dat aankunt als we getrouwd zijn?' 'Ik zal met genoegen toekijken hoe je je vijf keer per dag omkleedt,' zei Luciano.

Literature differs from life in that life is amorphously full of detail, and rarely directs us toward it, whereas literature teaches us to notice. Literature makes us better noticers of life; we get to practice on life itself; which in turn makes us better readers of detail in literature; which in turn makes us better readers of life. James Wood, How Fiction Works As

The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop. Mark Twain

Why is it that everybody else is traffic?

A hawk reeled overhead with a rodent squirming in its beak, close enough so you could see the bird's black shiny eyes.

I put just a teaspoon of catshit in your sandwich, but you didn't notice it at all." To my mind, a small bit of catshit equals a catshit sandwich, unless I know where the catshit is and can eat around it.

Most kids bent their heads onto their notebooks and tried to sleep. One boy gauged the quality of his day by sleeping on graph paper, then drawing a circle around the drool spot he'd made and comparing it for size and integrity to his drool spot from the day before. For

She looked around the room and motioned for the waitress to bring her check. Eb waited while she settled her tab.

you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat their dogs.

And the most important thing he told me was that you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat their dogs.

The world in which the kestrel moves, the world that it sees, is, and always will be, entirely beyond us. That there are such worlds all around us is an essential feature of our world.

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.

The poet must not only write the poem but must scrutinize the world intensely, or anyway that part of the world he or she has taken for subject. If the poem is thin, it is likely so not because the poet does not know enough words, but because he or she has not stood long enough among the flowers--has not seen them in any fresh, exciting, and valid way.

Far off in the red mangroves an alligator has heaved himself onto a hummock of grass and lies there, studying his poems.

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for– to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world (from, 'Mindful')

Let me keep company always with those who say "Look!" and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.

Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell others.

Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

I cherish two sentences and keep them close to my desk. The first is by Flaubert. I came upon it among Van Gough's letters. It says, simply, 'Talent is long patience, and originality an effort of will and of intense observation.