Quotes About Observation

When I was still in prep school - 14, 15 - I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things.

I wasn't a class clown, I just found at an early age that I was able to make people laugh. So I mostly wrote funny stuff instead of writing what I was supposed to be writing.

As a child, I was fascinated by the stories of Dickens acting out everything in front of the mirror as he wrote it down. Later, when you approach his work as an actor, you notice how sayable the dialogue is.

I've actually always started with what feels most natural. Which is, the people who surround me in my daily life. So, the first show I ever wrote, which is called 'Surface Transit,' was based in part on people I knew from my family. Co-workers, ex-boyfriends. All of that kind of thing.

I wish I wrote more about the world at more distance from myself.

It takes me a long time to get with a landscape. It took me 20 years before I wrote anything about Ibiza, and I haven't written about Oregon yet, although I've been there 20 years - possibly I'm almost due.

I want to know why people are getting laughs. Why this joke works and why that one didn't work. It all comes back to helping me be a better WWE Superstar. So I love it.

I trained with a guy by the name of Scott Casey. He actually worked with WWE back in the day, but he didn't become a big star. What I want to teach is what he taught me: that the smallest things are what people are really looking for.

When I worked at Yahoo, I saw a lot of acquisitions. Some succeeded, and some failed. I think I have learned from that.

True Yankees fans know an up-and-coming player when they see one.

Nobody sees the obvious, nobody observes the ordinary. There are more miracles in a square yard of earth than in all the fables of the Church.

There's two players that really stand out: Sean Wright-Phillips and Aaron Lennon. They're very small so have a low centre of gravity so they're very quick over five yards. You always had to stay switched on and try and predict where they were going as it was always a battle with those two.

I can see what goes on defensively in a game, but 80 or 90 yards away, you can have no idea about the attack or how someone scored. I guess it's once a goalkeeper, always a goalkeeper.

I could never be anyone I've played. I am so not a detective; I can barely get 200 yards from A to B with the help of Google maps, and I am just about the least observant person on the planet, so I never notice what people look like or how they walk or if they're committing a crime in broad daylight.

I was a highlight coordinator. My job was to go in and watch games, watch and type. Basically every time the camera frame changed, I had to log it as something: 'Emmitt Smith rushed for 4 yards... Close-up of Jimmy Johnson on the sidelines... 37-yard field goal.'

I love that perhaps we don't see the things that are there because we have no yardstick to see things by, to compare them.

To be a great poker player, you're going to have to learn this fact: Everything that's said at a poker table is worth listening to. It's all information that you can use to make better decisions, whether people are talking about baseball, politics, or, oh yeah, poker.

I just watched a ton of comedy and saw a ton of different styles, and eventually you think, 'Oh, yeah, I could be like that.'

You can always pick up stuff when you're watching a high level - it's like with anything - so yeah, I watch a lot of football.

But, yeah, I'm really happy when I'm writing. When I'm being creative and when I have something that I can put down. You know, if you go out and you overhear a conversation or you have a thought, you have a receptacle to go home and say, 'Oh, this would be great in this script.' Your antenna's out in a different way, and I love that time.

Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.

Jamie Moyer was in his third year as a major league pitcher and was, by his own admission, still wide-eyed, watching everything going on around him and soaking it in. He paid particular attention to older teammates on his Chicago Cubs squad, hoping to emulate habits that had allowed those veterans to extend their careers.

Usually you have a feel for what a kid's abilities are by the end of their sophomore year.

In the United States, the mainstream news outlets like to portray themselves as observers, content to let events play out without interference. But in Britain, where crusading journalistic campaigns are part of the tradition, it is far more acceptable for reporters to become active participants, with a specific outcome in mind.