Quotes About Observation

A mystery can be very simple: if I drive this road, not my usual road, what will I see? Changing a known route throws us into the now. We become refocused on the visible, visual world. Sight leads to insight.

operational proof...it's all theory until you see for yourself whether or not something works.

I discovered that when one follows the artist's eye one sees unexpected treasures in so many seemingly ordinary scenes.

Carrying a plate on which she'd placed a sandwich made with burlap bread, she looked over my shoulder.

perch on the wall

Oh, my dear, love isn't always the coup de foudre --the lightning strike. Sometimes it happens quietly, so quitely you may not even notice.

What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies.

Poets don't run out of material the way novelists do because they don't depend on material in the same way.

This [...] isn`t something I actually saw, but what you end up remembering isn`t always the same as what you witnessed.

but what you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.

One feeling at least grows stronger in me with each year that passes—a longing to see the cranes. At this time of year I stand on a hill and watch the sky. Today they did not come. There were only wild geese. Geese would be beautiful if cranes did not exist.

We listen to what people say, we read what they write—that's our evidence, that's our corroboration. But if the face contradicts the speaker's words, we interrogate the face. A shifty look in the eye, a rising blush, the uncontrollable twitch of a face muscle—and then we know. We recognise the hypocrisy or the false claim, and the truth stands evident before us.

what you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed.

I was too far away to observe what color Enid Starkie's eyes were; all I remember of her is that she dressed like a matelot, walked like a scrum-half, and had an atrocious French accent.

If asked in a court of law what happened and what was said, I could only attest to the words "heading," "stagnating" and "peaceable." I'd never thought of myself as peaceable—or its opposite—until then. I would also swear to the truth of the biscuit tin; it was burgundy red, with the Queen's smiling profile on it.

I would find myself staring resentfully at people on buses merely going home at the end of their day. How could they sit there so idly and unknowingly, their indifferent profiles on display, when the world was about to be changed?

Grief, like death, is banal and unique. So, a banal comparison. When you change your make of car, you suddenly notice how many other cars of the same sort there are on the road. They register in a way they never did before. When you are widowed, you suddenly notice all the widows and widowers coming towards you. Before, they had been more or less invisible, and they continue to remain so to the other drivers, to the unwidowed.

But what helps? What do we need to know? Not everything. Everything confuses. Directness also confuses. The full-face portrait staring back at you hypnotises. Flaubert is usually looking away in his portraits and photographs. He's looking away so that you can't catch his eye; he's also looking away because what he can see over your shoulder is more interesting than your shoulder.

Margarita m?gdavo sakyti, kad yra dvi r?šys moter?: tos, kurios matomos kiaurai, ir tos, kurios nešioja paslapt?. Ir kad tai yra svarbiausia, k? vyrai išsyk pajunta, ir svarbiausia, kas juos patraukia arba ne. Vienus traukia vieno tipo moterys, kitus kito. Margarita - man nereikia to sakyti - buvo kiaurai matoma, bet kartais ji pavyd?davo toms, kurios nešiojo paslapt? ar apsimesdavo jos apgaubtos.

Razumem da u tom svesnom skretanju pogleda može biti i ne?eg pozitivnog: lakše je gurati dalje ako ne prime?ujete neprijatne stvari. Ali, ako ne prime?ujete neprijatne stvari, na kraju ?ete poverovati da do njih nikad i ne dolazi. Uvek vas iznenade.

Sometimes the past may be a greased pig; sometimes a bear in its den; and sometimes merely the flash of a parrot, two mocking eyes that spark at you from the forest.

To look at ourselves from afar, to make the subjective suddenly objective: this gives us a psychic shock.

To je ono Å¡to ne valja na ovom svetu, pomislila je. Digli smo ruke od osmatranja.

One had turned gay, after all these years, having suddenly started noticing the napes of young men's necks.