A stand-up comedian will never be the life of a party. Instead, he will be the guy who is standing at a corner and observing people.
I think in many ways, I’m sort of a blank canvas, because in many ways, I’m just observing the world and the people around me and their characters and letting them kind of explode off me and to find out why they’re doing what they’re doing. But then every once in awhile, I get to take on a whole new character.
Observing gravitational waves would yield an enormous amount of information about the phenomena of strong-field gravity. If we could detect black holes collide, that would be amazing.
I’d like to pretend to be all Olympian and above it, as if this is a phenomenon I’m observing from a great height, nothing to do with my own behavior at all – but the fact is I’m absolutely one of those people in the cafe staring at my phone.
My books are based on observing others, not myself.
I never studied directing and I never really thought about doing it, and then I just found myself in that situation and tried it. I like to be observing everything else, and I get self-conscious in front of the camera.
I believe it’s worth observing terrible things people have done as clearly and rationally as we can to show that our monsters are not caricatures.
A voyage to Europe in the summer of 1921 gave me the first opportunity of observing the wonderful blue opalescence of the Mediterranean Sea. It seemed not unlikely that the phenomenon owed its origin to the scattering of sunlight by the molecules of the water.
I think you can tell a lot about people if you observe them as they’re observing.
One thing I’ve learned from my parents and from observing all the artists I’ve been lucky enough to grow up around is that you’ve got to be brave.
At present, I am mainly observing the physical motion of mountains, water, trees and flowers. One is everywhere reminded of similar movements in the human body, of similar impulses of joy and suffering in plants.
When I used to work in television, a tip was rather than looking down the barrel of the camera and imagine people watching, which is terrifying, imagine your most discerning friend observing you, and imagine you’re just talking to them.
I love to see what real human behavior looks like. I’ve always envisioned my job as just observing and noting that and, for the purposes of my work, just cutting out the boring parts.
Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.
I’ve been observing Ramadan during all the years I’ve been in football. It’s very important that you eat well. It’s important that you eat the right food because you can gain weight or you can have less food in your body.
The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.
TV’s a wonderful medium: this intimate way of observing how a successful family operates and deals with each other.
A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.
In the midst of observing the world and coming to consciousness, I was becoming a writer, and what I wanted to put on the page were the stories of people who looked like me.
Being a showrunner is doing a bit of everything. It’s not just writing. It’s also management: managing actors, managing producers, managing a crew, being kind to people, being a good boss, observing deadlines.
My fascination with letting images repeat and repeat – or in film’s case ‘run on’ – manifests my belief that we spend much of our lives seeing without observing.
I’m a big fan of the Mass Effect games, and that’s all about social manipulation and observing people and alliances and relationships.
A lot of cable television is shot on a single camera. Our eyes are more trained to that. It takes the camera off the crane, away from observing the action, to becoming a character in the story along with everyone else. People are getting used to that.
I should point out, however, that at first some difficulty was experienced in observing the phenomena predicted by the theory, owing to the extreme smallness of the variations in the period of oscillation.
The best preparation for acting is life – observing life and people and observing yourself. All that becomes your library. So when you have to research a part, a scene or an emotion, you go into the library and get what you need.
When I have a book I enjoy, I’m partly in the book. I’m not just observing it.
Pointing out that overspending on public-employee benefits leads to fiscal instability does not mean that public employees are bad people or that they deserve to fall on hard times; it’s just observing a simple truth.
Only by observing the laws of nature can mankind avoid costly blunders in its exploitation. Any harm we inflict on nature will eventually return to haunt us. This is a reality we have to face.
I don’t really want to be in the business of observing conversations.
In some ways. I always feel between worlds, between cultures, and I think that’s not necessarily a bad place for a writer to be. Writers are kind of on the fringe anyway, observing, writing things down. I’m still mostly American, but it’s a nice tension.
We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing.
We’re looking at Earth science, observing our planet. Also space science, looking at the ozone in the atmosphere around our Earth. Also looking at life science. And on a human level, using ourselves as test subjects.
I feel like the writer observing the grief, but it is difficult to be detached from it.
If you’re not observing the world around you, in some sense you’re not really an artist because then that means you’re just replicating other people’s stuff, or, I don’t even know what you’re doing.
I learned a lot from observing Wayne at the Rogers Cup. He was offered a cart across the grounds, but he wouldn’t take it; he walked and stopped and signed autographs for people, and I thought that was amazing.
A lot of being a comedian is about observing people.
I could never call myself an atheist; my parents could, quite happily. I always felt like there was a little bit more out there, and was always into observing the world from a slightly more spiritual, as opposed to scientific, perspective.
I’ve always felt like I was observing everything, like I’m just looking out of the window, peeping how everybody is living and just penning about it, so I made the album about that concept.
Pleasant speech yields joy to all, and observing this, is there any need for unpleasant speech?
What’s exciting about theatre is observing human behaviour. You’re constantly making judgments about body language, the physical, the emotional, the intellectual.
I love reading people. I really enjoy watching, observing, and being able to figure out a person, the reason they wore that dress, the reason they smell the way they do.
In a lifetime of observing and participating in political debate, I have seen a lot of meanness.
I like being able to go to the cinema and sit and spend time observing something without thinking about plot or what one character is saying. I feel like I’m able to connect on a much more profound level.
I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing.
I’ve always found that I personally love to observe things, and I’m good at observing things.
I love documentaries, I like observing real people.
For me the march was a labor – a labor of love – but I was busy handing out flyers for the National Association of Black Social Workers, so I really wasn’t standing in the crowd listening and observing. I was busy.
I realised years ago that no one really knows what they’re doing and you kind of just learn by observing.
I like observing intelligent people who have expertise in areas I’m mostly ignorant about.
When two people are paying close attention to each other, check out the others in the group and see who’s observing. Human dynamics are amazing, but so much that you might learn is subconscious interplay.
I was always an outsider, always standing outside, observing and trying to figure things out. Which is exactly what you need to do as a writer, I suppose.
I’m good at observing people, physical stuff, which leant itself to acting.
When I was a youngster, Praveen Kumar was in the same club as me, and because we are similar bowlers, I learnt a lot from him. We used to have conversations, but not a lot. What was very helpful was observing what he was bowling, the kind of fields he had, and what his thinking was.
The limelight is a tricky place, because you can’t believe what’s going on around you. You stop observing. You stop perceiving. You stop extending yourself, and you become isolated.
I just like observing people – it’s something I’ve done ever since I was a kid, and I got really good at it. That’s a big part of why I became a comedian. My audience is filled with every kind of person you can imagine, and I love that.
One of my pleasures is observing people’s behavior and pointing out the inconsistencies that we all sort of have at the center of our lives.
