Quotes About Observation

years of observing from the outside (one gets into the habit of being oneself)—

A handful of ten-year-olds with underprivileged hair and no eyebrows were slouched on a wall, scoping out the cars and thinking wire hangers.

He sat by her, watching every gesture she made, as if he would paint her portrait afterward.

It was 4:00 p.m. Chris would be in his car, she was pretty certain, watching Boss Man pull out of the parking lot. He would wait a few seconds to be certain the

She would walk toward him, sniffing the air around him, like a hound. He smelled of alcohol—not

It was men like that, she decided, that made her eternally grateful to be a woman! She didn't know why Harlan was so obsessed with discovering primitive man. All he had to do was look about him: In Sophie's estimation, mankind had not progressed very far!

Nothing is ever what it seems and not everything is yours to see.

When I'm talking to someone I think 'can I use this dialogue in a book,'" said Luis. "If the answer is no I try talking to someone else.

Sam looked at the sky to see if there were a lot of stars. There seemed to be a normal amount of stars.

people who don't know what to title their novels/movies can title them 'where's waldo' and insert waldo (or not, depending on tone) in one scene

sad things are beautiful only from a distance

Laura was ten feet away, in a throne-like chair, facing Paul, but not looking at him, or anyone, it seemed. Paul openly stared at her for around ten seconds, to no response, then moved chips and guacamole onto his lap (partly because he felt anxious about Laura seeming to refuse to look at him) and focused on steadily eating while repeatedly thinking "eating chips and guacamole.

This quality of seeing things freshly, as though for the first time, lies at the heart of mindfulness.

Mindfulness is not thinking about what we experience, but a direct, bare attention to the experience itself.

mental noting may help you. Are you agitated? Note "agitation." Are you gripped in tension? Note "tension." Do you feel your pulse beating or your heart pounding? Just note it as such.

Mindfulness is a meditative awareness that cultivates the capacity to see things just as they are from moment to moment

get to a point where we've observed our mind long enough to become more aware of its repetitive cycles, playing the same tapes over and over, in endless variations.

Instead of being swept away and captured by a thought or feeling, mindfulness steadily observes those thoughts and feelings as they come and go.

can't do this,' 'I feel overwhelmed,' and 'I hate myself'. So I labeled them 'M1,' 'M2,' and 'M3,' for 'morning tape thoughts.' This way I can more easily watch the habitual play of thoughts running through my mind, without taking them too seriously or getting hooked in.

By becoming mindful we can drop the compulsion to try to make disturbing thoughts go away, to agitate ourselves by worrying, or to try to make things better or in any way different. We can be with life just as it is, observing completely what happens, without immediately trying to change it.

Observing desire without acting on it enlarges our freedom to choose how we live.

As I noticed feelings and thoughts appear and disappear, it became increasingly clear that they were just coming and going on their own. . . . There was no sense of a self owning them.

Mindfulness is the intentional process of paying attention, without judgment, to the unfolding of moment-by-moment experience.

Mindfulness is the intentional process of paying attention, without judgment, to the unfolding