Quotes About Observation

I sat near a window in our little synagogue and looked out at the large church and wondered how a statue whose face was so full of love could be worshipped by someone whose heart was so full of hate.

an artist, too, must see the world whole, he must somehow learn to see during the blinks, he must see where no one else can see, he must see the connections, the betweennesses in the world. Even if the connections are ugly and evil, the artist must learn to see and record them.

I walked back to the living room and found my father asleep on the sofa, his round mouth pursed and tightly shut, his breath filtering softly through his nose. A single fly, its armored back an oily, metallic green, was dancing a circle on his chin. What he'd brought home from work.

I have lived one step away from losing my mind for years. I am quick and accurate in spotting unstable streaks in others.

My mother finally took me to a child psychologist, who knew exactly what I was, but she just couldn't accept it and kept trying to tell my folks I was reading their body language and was very observant, so I had good reason to imagine I heard people's thoughts. Of course, she couldn't admit I was literally hearing people's thoughts because that just didn't fit into her world.

God bless the American spectator.

Why don't they just take him out? I asked. I'm not politically minded, as I guess you can tell. Mr. Cataliades was smiling at me. So direct, so classic, he said. So American.

I had never seen so many cute men in one place in my life. But I could tell they were not for me. Russell was like the gay vampire Hugh Hefner, and this was the Playboy Mansion, with an emphasis on the boy.

but I was sure he'd been talking about the home of someone white, because he'd said, All the pictures on the walls, they all white as lilies and smiling like alligators.

But there was something in the air, a watchfulness laced with a charge of malice. The eyes observing us were invisible, but were observing us, nonetheless.

Amelia was sitting on the pavement in her lawn chair, a glass of wine in her hand. When we emerged, she set the glass down very carefully on the ground and then looked us over from head to toe. 'Okay, don't know how to react,' she said, finally.

What pretty nail polish,' Eric said, smiling. [...] Trust Eric to pick out the one thing that was new and different about me.

Grief was boring. This was a shallow thought about a deep subject, but it was a valid observation.

He had thinning brown hair, broad shoulders, sharp blue eyes, and a suggestion of a gut.

He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window.

To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world—impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito.

Looking from outside into an open window one never sees as much as when one looks through a closed window. There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant, more insidious, more dazzling than a window lighted by a single candle. What one can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind a windowpane. In that black or luminous square life lives, life dreams, life suffers.

The ladies looked one another over with microscopic carelessness.

There's nothing I like more than to have one of our movies run, and then I go to the ladies' room and listen to everybody talk about it. No one has any idea who I am.

You've never seen anything until you've seen David Mamet be an Edwardian lady. He always conveys what he means, but he's so... masculine.

I can tell when I meet you, within three minutes, how you were raised. When I met Lady Gaga on the 'American Horror' set... beautifully brought up.

If you're entering a room for the first time, do it the way you would in life - look around; see how they have the furniture arranged. If your character is meeting another character for the first time, meet them the way you would in life.

I don't talk during production meetings, people don't generally say anything.

They talk about Amen Corner but there's so much more to it than what meets the eye on this golf course.