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Observation Quotes
"Down there between our legs, it's like an entertainment complex in the middle of a sewage system. Who designed that?"
14
"Think not because no man sees such things will remain unseen."
14
"Had Moreau had any intelligible object, I could have sympathized at least a little with him. I am not so squeamish about pain as that. I could have forgiven him a little even, had his motive been only hate. But he was so irresponsible, so utterly careless! His curiosity, his mad, aimless investigations, drove him on; and the Things were thrown out to live a year or so, to struggle and blunder and suffer, and at last to die painfully."
14
"Flowers are so inconsistent!"
13
"When I was growing up, my parents were almost involved in various volunteer things. My dad was head of Planned Parenthood. And it was very controversial to be involved with that."
13
"He is not a man wedded to action, Boleyn, but rather a man who stands by, smirking and stroking his beard; he thinks he looks enigmatic, but instead he looks as if he's pleasuring himself."
13
"Her eyes traced the sleek shape of the table's legs, the sinuous curves of its corners, the gleam of its reflective, dark brown surface. She noticed that every time she breathed out, the surface fogged, and she disappeared from her father's table."
13
"As far as she could see, children mostly argued, shouted, ran around very fast, laughed loudly, picked their noses, got dirty and sulked."
13
"You can't go by what a girl says, when she's giving you the devil for making a chump of yourself. It's like Shakespeare. Sounds well, but doesn't mean anything."
13
"Her eyes betrayed no shock at the sights of the quay as they unfolded " not the sweating deckhands, the prostitutes crowding the ship, the hubbub of stalls, including one where three slaves were for sale, their ankles manacled. She might as well have been walking through a country garden as she moved inexorably away from the water."
13
"Men were weird. Especially men made of tempered steel and fire and perpetual darkness. Or men with penises. Either way."
13
"Quiet people always know more than they seem. Although very normal, their inner world is by default fronted mysterious and therefore assumed weird. Never underestimate the social awareness and sense of reality in a quiet person; they are some of the most observant, absorbent persons of all."
13
"Right now, it's hard to imagine that it is raining anywhere in the world."
13
"I feel sorry for novelists when they have to mention women's eyes: there's so little choice, and whatever colouring is decided upon inevitably carries banal implications. Her eyes are blue: innocence and honesty. Her eyes are black: passion and depth. Her eyes are green: wildness and jealousy. Her eyes are violet: the novel is by Raymond Chandler."
13
"I tried to bring up boyfriends and sex. Her great dark eyes surveyed me with emptiness and a kind of chagrin that reached back generations and generations in her blood from not having done what was crying to be done--whatever it was, and everybody knows what it was."
13
"Society in its boundless ignorance ridicules the caterpillar but praises the butterfly."
13
"He was staring hard, not at his wife and me but at his daughter watching us. In his cold pupil, in the firm twist of his lips, was reflected Madame Miyagi's orgasm reflected in her daughter's gaze."
13
"And only after he said it did he realize that among the countless suicides he could remember, this was the first with cyanide that had not been caused by the sufferings of love. Then something changed in the tone of his voice."And when you do find one, observe with care, he said to the intern:"they almost always have crystals in their heart."
13
"They appear somewhat unreliable,' he murmured.'Unreliable? Nonsense, Superior! Out of luck is all, and we both know how that goes, no? Why, there's not a man of them I wouldn't trust my mother to.'Are you sure?'She's been dead these twenty years. What harm could they do her now?"
13
"For the night Shows stars and women in a better light."
13
"Stains are even worse when you're the only one who can see them."
13
"Taking a deep breath, I shake my head and find Judge staring at me. "Reason number 106 why dogs are smarter than humans," I say. "Once you leave the litter, you sever contact with your mothers."
13
"Ember was watching me, green bright eyes in the shadows of the room. She crouched against the wall with her wings pressed close and her tail curled around herself. Even with her fangs slightly bared and her sides heaving with fear, she was still beautiful, elegant, fiery, everything my dragon wanted."
13
"When I heard the learn'd astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars."
13
"The only thing that can stop hair from falling ... is the floor."
12
"Was it the case that colours dimmed as the eye grew elderly? Or was it rather that in youth your excitement about the world transferred itself onto everything you saw and made it brighter?"
12
"He hated this feeling of free-floating, just drifting from place to place, thought to thought, without any sense of anchor or root."
12
"The tedious never die, that's what makes them tedious."
12
"He'd had the foresight to know that a lot of the savages wear store-bought clothes."
12
"The surveillance, he thought, essentially should be maintained. And, if possible, by me. I should always be watching, watching and figuring out, even if I never do anything about what I see; even if I just sit there and observe silently, not seen: that is important, that I as a watcher of all that happens should be at my place."
12
"I've often been sorry to see a night end, even while I have loved seeing the dawn come."
12
"People in a hurry cannot think cannot grow nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility."
12
"He began to realize that you cannot even fight happily with creatures that stand upon a different mental basis to yourself."
12
"Generally, there is a lot of truth value in stepping back, observing, then logically generalizing the extremes of what you see."
12
"I think it's very important for writers and artists generally to be witnesses to the world, and to be transparent. To let other people speak... to travel... to experience the world. And memorialize it."
11
"Meditation is a state, often defined as deep dreamless sleep awake. But, in the same way that you cannot sleep on demand, you cannot meditate on demand - that is, you can't reach the state instantly in the same way that you can raise your right hand. The practices preceding meditation are relaxation, stillness and mental focus. Those are all things you can do. They are the preparation. Then, if you the circumstances are right, you can transition from the waking to the meditative state."
11
"His shoulder-length hair was a rich, dark-brown color with a slight wave to it and it flowed behind him as he ran into the center of the gypsies. He was tall, muscular, and so beautifully handsome, yet primal. He looked magnificent."
11
"He recognizes voices within silence. (of Max Sebald)"
11
"Sometimes thought Liir-his first thought in weeks and weeks-sometimes I hate this marvelous land of ours. It's so much like home, and then it holds out on you."
11
"Connie, giving her thoughts on why Vinnie's hot temper is less than normal, says: 'Lucille must have fed him a Vallium smoothie this morning."
11
"The limitation prompting folly " was an attitude of superiority so dense as to be impenetrable."
11
"In fact, there are many uses of the innumerable opportunities a modern life supplies for regarding - at a distance, through the medium of photography - other people's pain."
11
"Nick's eyes widened as a total state of befuddled huh possessed him. Was he in theTwilight Zone?"
11
"Nothing is really typical of my efforts... I'm simply casting about for better ways to crystallise and capture certain strong impressions (involving the elements of time, the unknown, cause and effect, fear, scenic and architectural beauty, and other seemingly ill-assorted things) which persist in clamouring for expression."
11
"She was a most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. How she got from story to story was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so decorous in herself, and so highly connected, was not to be suspected of dropping over the banisters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility of locomotion suggested the wild idea. Another noticeable circumstance in Mrs. Sparsit was, that she was never hurried. She would shoot with consummate velocity from the roof to the hall, yet would be in full possession of her breath and dignity on the moment of her arrival there. Neither was she ever seen by human vision to go at a great pace."
11
"On the single strand of wire strung to bring our house electricity, grackles and starlings neatly punctuated an invisible sentence."
11
"The thirty-plus years of marriage between the ceiling and the cement plaster showed signs of weakness by frequently developing cracks and holes."
11
"The answers to your problems lie all around you. The keys to your self-discovery are waiting to be found in each sunset, each pair of eyes, each breath of fresh air. Listen to the symphony of life and you will hear yourself. Find the beauty of nature and you have found your soul."
11
"It was dark, so I couldn't make out much of her face, but she had brilliant red hair, like honey and roses and the sun altogether."
11
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