Quotes About Observation

To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.

Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.

I have noticed that if you look carefully at people's eyes the first five seconds they look at you, the truth of their feelings will shine through for just an instant before it flickers away.

They talk to me and tell me I'm pretty and inform me when the neighbor's dog is stalking me in the name of the high god Satan . . . so how imaginary can they be?

Things aren't bad or good. They just are.

Art opens the fishiest eye . . .

La mejor manera de emplear tu tiempo es separarte de todo, y en la soledad de tu habitación, observar el caleidoscopio de este mundo desconocido.

Looking up into the trees, I noticed that one still had a few dark leaves clinging to the upper branches. Under my gaze, the leaves became a semé of birds, scattering upward and away in a salutary swoop, leaving only a plastic bag, caught and hanging listlessly in the bare limbs.

I . . . watched the storm through an amnion of water.

I was studying the sky like I was an astronomer, except it was daytime and I didn't have a telescope, so I was just an idiot.

Whenever a woman requires too many things from a man, he'll resent it. Let him give what he wants to give freely; then observe who he is.

More than anything else, he watches to see if you'll be too emotionally dependent on him.

Ethnography of course means many things. Minimally, however, it has always meant the attempt to understand another life world using the self - as much of it as possible - as the instrument of knowing.

Alice's dinner consisted of one-half cup medium-grain white rice (120 calories), four spears of asparagus (20 calories), and a pat of butter (40 calories). Bones watched as she used her index finger to smear the butter on an asparagus spear. Then she sucked her middle finger, pretending to remove the excess butter. The buttered finger scratched an ankle, and the calories disappeared into her leg warmer. "Tricky," he said under his breath. She smiled. "Just good technique.

Never mind what a man says; watch what he does.

Miss Charlotte was often and spectacularly silent. But her silence was that of the woods and hills, a natural absence of speech. The maharani's, on the other hand, made Mrs. Watson think of the walled forts of Jaipur, a silence that watched and hid.

Charlotte couldn't help laughing. "My dear lady, I feared to impose on your kindness. I see now that I needn't have worried. You are a shark!" Mrs. Watson preened a little, evidently pleased by Charlotte's observation. "A shark with a good nose for money in the water but, let's say, rather soft teeth.

He liked seeing the world through her eyes. The night, to him, was rather ordinary, overlaid with London's crowded odors and a damp that promised a deeply unlovely fog in the near future. But she preferred to consider the commonest patch of grass and the most unremarkable clump of trees worthy of a Constable canvas - in which case this night could very well have graced the ceiling of a great cathedral.

Mrs. Watson radiated such warmth and goodwill, it was difficult not to exclaim with pleasure in her company: One felt seen and understood. Whereas in Holmes's company, one felt seen through and analyzed.

When I interview candidates, I like to go where they live, so I can see them in their environment, not just in mind.

I notice things.

Poets, essayists, chroniclers, wags, and wise men write often about death ut have rarely seen it. Physicians and nurses, who see it often, rarely write about it.

All good New Orleanians go to look at the Mississippi at least once a day. At night it is like creeping into a dark bedroom to look at a sleeping child--something of that sort--gives you the same warm nice feeling.

I don't know what I shall do. I just want to go away and look at people and think.