Quotes About Observation

Everything seems new. The outlines of his furniture. The sunbeams slicing across the carpet. His hands before his face.

You could figure out anything about a person if you just tried hard enough.

In these days there are few sights more terrifying than that of a well-dressed man with a notebook looking at a piece of land.

Will I stop describing, as only a true Southerner can, a truly awful physical appearance as simply "most unfortunate" as in, "She has a most unfortunate nose"?

Nose, eyes, ears

Mentre aspettavo mi guardavo intorno: l'intonaco scabro nella luce, un ciuffo d'erba sul terrazzo contro il cielo, il gran silenzio meridiano. Nello strepito del carro che s'allontanava, pensai che quelli per Oreste erano luoghi familiari, c'era nato e cresciuto, dovevano dirgli chi sa che. Pensai quanti luoghi ci sono nel mondo che appartengono così a qualcuno, che qualcuno ha nel sangue e nessun altro li sa.

Erano gli unici, i soldati, ad accorgersi che le donne esistevano ancora. Nella citùù disordinata e sempre all'erta, più nessuno osservava le donne di un tempo, nessuno le seguiva, nemmeno vestite da estate, nemmeno se ridevano. Anche in questo la guerra, io l'avevo prevista. Per me questo rischio era cessato da un pezzo. Se avevo ancora desideri, non avevo più illusioni.

The surest, and the quickest, way for us to arouse the sense of wonder is to stare, unafraid, at a single object. Suddenly—miraculously—it will look like something we have never seen before.

such understanding might be extremely boring. Also, such understanding might include seeing some things you don't want to see.

It's not a pretty world, Papa.' 'I've noticed,' my father said softly.

Howard adores Sam's looks. He loves the strong cut of jaw made satin with thickening peach fuzz, loses himself in the green eyes. Howard stares at them like a lover, but always obliquely. (Sometimes we watch our son from a distance. "I wonder what he's thinking," Howard will say.)

That Fan did not see any of this is not so ironic, for all along her journey we've observed more of her than she'll ever know. She moves on, she pushes forward, this her guileless calling, and we have to remind ourselves that it's perhaps more laudable simply to keep heading out into the world than always tilting to leave one's mark on it.

All science is a search for the conditions that determine phenomena.

Hey, our hair's the same color," I said, eying us side by side in the mirror. "Sure is, girlfriend." Eric grinned at me.

we all tend to see what we are looking for.

All great poets become naturally, fatally, critics.

The observer is a prince who enjoys his incognito everywhere. The lover of life makes the world his family, just as the lover of the fair sex devises his family from all discovered, discoverable and undiscoverable beauties; as the lover of pictures lives in an enchanted society of painted dreams on canvas.

What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.

Prose writers, by contrast, are unreliable friends: They are always studying you to see if there's anything in your personality or appearance that they can steal for their next narrative.

I looked to my left and saw a gorgonzola-green automobile in the driveway.

As Nietzsche says about Christians, you can tell from their faces that they don't enjoy doing what they do. Fiction writers cluster in the unlit corners of the room, silently observing everybody, including the poets, who are usually having a fine time in the center spotlight, making a spectacle of themselves as they eat the popcorn and drink the beer and gossip about other poets.

Russell Bufalino's penetrating good eye stayed on mine. I moved back up in my seat. I couldn't show anything in my face. I couldn't say a word. That's not the way it works. The wrong look in my eyes and my house gets painted. Jimmy

During the dinner Bill said something to Jimmy I'll never forget. He said, "I've never seen a man walk straight through a crowd of people like the Irishman does and never touch a single person. Everybody automatically parts out of the way. It's like Moses parting the Red Sea." Jimmy

I didn't have any friends at school, didn't want any. I felt better being alone. I sat on a bench and watched the others play and they looked foolish to me.