Quotes About Observation

Have you noticed how nobody ever looks up? Nobody looks at chimneys, or trees against the sky, or the tops of buildings. Everybody just looks down at the pavement or their shoes. The whole world could pass them by and most people wouldn't notice.

Have you noticed how nobody ever looks up? Nobody looks at chimneys, or trees against the sky, or the tops of buildings. Everybody just looks down at the pavement or their shoes. The whole world could pass them by and most people wouldn't notice.

Everyone needed a reminder to simply look at things and enjoy them, without labeling them.

Every time I looked at the sky and at my watch, that monster was still up there.

She drained the pasta and looked out the window over the sink. In the middle of the street, paying no attention whatsoever to oncoming cars, two little boys were jousting with hockey sticks while riding bicycles, their mother observing through a fog of cigarette smoke and a beer. Human beings, Janet thought, were a disappointment.

I never wanted to become an actress because I'd read great literature or seen great Shakespeare. It was more just wanting to understand what the people were really like, why they said all the strange things they did.

You could do worse than to spend your days staring at blue jays.

For the record, even a turkey vulture won't eat a processed chicken nugget. I stopped buying them for my son when I saw the vultures picking around them.

Barn swallows, like phoebes, are worth it. Watch swallows skim low over the lawn in the sidelight of a summer evening; watch a phoebe whirl out to snap up a passing crane fly, then fetch up on a dead branch, and then imagine the scene without their spark.

A novelist is like a scout commissioned to go and see what is happening in the depth of the soul. He comes back and reports what he has observed. He never lives on the surface but only inhabits the darkest regions

I have always thought that by observing things with a great deal of attention you eventually wrest some of their secrets from them, making them utter what they would most like to keep to themselves.

Hysteria involves a relationship — one cannot be a hysteric on one's own. It always engages the other, inducing a reciprocity or a refusal. If the other refuses to participate in the free flow of mutual identification (the folie a deux), then the hysteric demands to be a spectacle only something one can look at or observe.

No estábamos enamorados, hacíamos el amor con un virtuosismo desapegado y crítico, pero después caíamos en silecios terribles y la espuma de los vasos de cerveza se iba poniendo como estopa, se entibiaba y contraía mientras nos mirábamos y sentíamos que eso era el tiempo...

You're like a witness. You're the one who goes to the museum and looks at the paintings. I mean the paintings are there and you're in the museum too, near and far away at the same time. I'm a painting. Rocamadour is a painting. Etienne is a painting, this room is a painting. You think that you're in the room but you're not. You're looking at the room, you're not in the room.

Déjame entrar, déjame ver algún día como ven tus ojos.

Por qué no aceptar lo que estaba ocurriendo sin pretender explicarlo

que no había más que fijarse un poco, sentirse un poco, callarse un poco, para descubrir los agujeros.

Qué complicado. Vos sos como un testigo, sos el que va al museo y mira los cuadros. Quiero decir que los cuadros están ahí y vos en el museo, cerca y lejos al mismo tiempo.

Decir de alguien que es un veleta prueba poca imaginación: se ven las vueltas pero no la intención, la punta de la flecha que busca hincarse y permanecer en el río del viento.

como un gato que mira fijo pero se ve que está por completo en otra cosa; que es otra cosa.

no sé si has visto cómo el paisaje se va rompiendo cuando lo miras alejarse...

Vos crees que estás en esta pieza pero no estas. Vos estás mirando la pieza, no estás en la pieza

Kinder sollen nur reden, wenn die Hühner pissen.

Fijate, ahora va a bailar, siempre baila un poco a esta hora. –Parece un oso.