Quotes About Observation

I grew up in the South Pacific. Basically, my brothers were Guamanian. I spoke words of Guamanian long before I spoke words of English, and so I've seen a lot. You know, I've traveled in places where people don't have the benefits of American life. And so I've seen a lot of stuff.

Astronomers are greatly disappointed when, having traveled halfway around the world to see an eclipse, clouds prevent a sight of it; and yet a sense of relief accompanies the disappointment.

When I was young, I assumed that authors must have traveled the world or done exotic things in order to tell great stories.

It is part of the photographer's job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country.

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.

I am sure that no traveler seeing things through author spectacles can see them as they are.

One of the things I'm fascinated by as a traveler is watching how different countries control how they let the world encounter them.

'Research,' for me, is a big word that encompasses a lot of different activities, all of them based around curiosity. Research is traveling to places, or studying snowflakes with a magnifying glass, or excavating one's memories. Research is walking around Hamburg with a notebook.

When I'm traveling the world, I don't ever look anymore at the geography - just enough to catch galleries and paintings.

I'm very observant. So, my mentor is really basically a lot of people who are just around me and life itself. Just living and going different places and traveling.

When I did play team sports, I was into soccer and hockey. I loved hockey. And then rock climbing became the thing that got me out of Iowa, and I traveled the world for rock climbing. I really loved the, I guess you would say, dirtbag lifestyle of not eating much and traveling the world and slipping into different cultures and just observing.

In 2007, I went straight from Tokyo to Iowa to join Hillary Clinton's traveling press. I felt like a foreigner there, too. I remember thinking, 'Americans are huge.'

One of the things the 'Tao of Travel' shows is how unforthcoming most travel writers are, how most travelers are. They don't tell you who they were traveling with, and they're not very reliable about things that happened to them.

I do a lot of cultural material that's based on my traveling around the world. I basically just report what I've seen and where I've been.

To me, traveling by bus is like climbing into a closet and watching 'Das Boot.'

I'm a great believer in the novelist being 'on the scene,' reporting, traveling, meeting all sorts of people.

I'll see somebody struggling with something, and it doesn't matter if it's ironing or mopping or traveling, my brain just starts to percolate.

I've developed a habit of people-watching. In Paris, I love watching all kinds of people walking by from my apartment terrace, and while I'm traveling the world, I enjoy observing all the people in airports.

I tend to be more of an introvert when I'm traveling. I do a lot of people-watching and espresso-drinking.

I don't subscribe to organised religion. I've travelled enough to see that adherents of organised religion often attack adherents of other religions.

People are people no matter where the hell you go. People still want to find relationships, fall in and out of love... that's what I've noticed as I've travelled around the world.

We travellers are in very hard circumstances. If we say nothing but what has been said before us, we are dull and have observed nothing. If we tell anything new, we are laughed at as fabulous and romantic.

I think some of the best modern writing comes now from travellers.

I don't much enjoy travelling, but I have always longed to take a slow train to Russia. I'd like to go alone - like writers do - with only a pencil and piece of paper as company. I'd take my sketchbook and note down all the wonderful details of other travellers.