Quotes about Observation

If ash-trays could speak, sir.' 'Indeed, yes.

So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days.

I am interested in the blueness of the cheese.

The vultures group themselves on the roof like pigeons: tiny moron head, long necks, faces like Carnival masks, and dusty plumages, peering this and that attentively for death.

The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see—every scrap

It had been an article of my creed. The human condition being what it was, let them fight, let them love, let them murder, I would not be involved. My fellow journalists called themselves correspondents; I preferred the title of reporter. I wrote what I saw. I took no action—even an opinion is a kind of action.

She had so much more capacity for love than I had - I couldn't bring down that curtain round the moment, I couldn't forget and I couldn't not fear. Even in the moment of love, I was like a police officer gathering evidence of a crime that hadn't yet been committed [...]

Phuong had kept us a table at the edge of the dance-floor and the orchestra was playing some tune which had been popular in Paris five years ago. Two Vietnamese couples were dancing, small, neat, aloof, with an air of civilization we couldn't match. (I recognized one, an accountant from the Banque de

Do not call any work menial until you have watched a proud person do it.

As a gardener, I wonder if flowers really can't speak or just exercise unfailing good judgment in the matter.

It's amazing how much funny stuff there is.... [A] river of rich comedic milk is flowing across the land, and as fast as I skim off the cream more cream appears.... I may be doomed to wade around forever in other people's pith. Not that it's such a bad life.

In the elder days of art Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part, For the gods see everywhere