Quotes About Observation

Prose is something that is persistent in staying in one place long enough to not only zero in on the dramatic effect of something that might have happened, or something that might have been seen, but also in watching how it played out and thinking about the cause and the effect.

The best part of watching kung fu movies with my dad was the conversations they sparked. We never watched them just for fun. 'Do you see how good his balance is?' My dad would always zero in on really specific stuff like that. Everything had a potential lesson.

I grew up in Zimbabwe in Southern Africa, and I moved to London when I was 17. And I started commuting and, actually, to go to college. And I used to really enjoy that part of my journey where the - it was actually a Tube train, but it was over ground, and it went right past the backs of people's houses, and I could actually see right in.

Going through my time as a coach in Zimbabwe and in South Africa, I know for a fact if there is anything dodgy in a game, look at the three people in black. They are the catalyst.

That's what we wanted to get across in that moment, particularly when Shaun goes to the shop when he's all hung over. He doesn't notice any of the zombies around him just because he never had before, so why should he at that point?

Traveling is one of few zones of experience where you are not directly plugged into the world around you. You're not part of the society you're passing through.

Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings.

When I was 7 and went to the zoo with my second-grade class, I saw chimpanzee eyes for the first time - the eyes of an unhappy animal, all alone, locked in a bare, concrete-floored, iron-barred cage in one of the nastier, old-fashioned zoos. I remember looking at the chimp, then looking away.

I love to go to the zoo. But not on Sunday. I don't like to see the people making fun of the animals, when it should be the other way around.

At the zoo, people would gather around the railway to see the snakes being fed, and my brothers would walk around the group, taking from purses or bags or using a razor to cut pockets and take wallets.

You know, if you have a zoo you don't want the other creatures to see you. You want them to hang out and act properly and, you know, when the monkeys will come and ask for the bananas, they won't act like monkeys. If you want them to act on what their true nature is, you've got to leave them alone.

Though not a natural world by any means, more like a collection of living dioramas, a zoo exists in its own time zone, somewhere between the seasonal sense of animals and our madly ticking watch time.

When I was in college, the first thing we did in acting class was to observe an animal at the zoo and become that animal. So I picked a wallaby.

My real personality comes out in the country. More spontaneous, more excited. There's always someone watching you in the city - you're a sort of zoo animal. My true nature is to want to hide a bit.

It is, I find, in zoology as it is in botany: all nature is so full, that that district produces the greatest variety which is the most examined.

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.

Not to go to the theatre is like making one's toilet without a mirror.

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

The only measure of what you believe is what you do. If you want to know what people believe, don't read what they write, don't ask them what they believe, just observe what they do.

If ever there was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson called New York.

I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachussets; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves.

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, timrous beastie 0 what a panic's in thy breastie! Wi' bickering brattle!

No animal admires another animal.

Cats - a standing rebuke to behavioural scientists . . . least human of all creatures.