Observation Skills Quotes

Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind.

I am not trained to be a director or an actor. I have learnt everything by watching other people work and studying their work.

A good teacher teaches people how to see, not what to see.

He thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.

I've never been on a movie where they play five-dollar Friday. I must not be very observant.

I think my thing is that I try and pick up on things that other people have maybe not picked up on.

There's nothing like drawing a thing to make you really see it.

There must be a reason why photographers are not very good at verbal communication. I think we get lazy.

I'm a people watcher, and I love to listen.

When I was a kid I never learned to play. I actually got in bands through watching people play and copying them.

The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.

The painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the color which common sense says they 'really' have, and to learn the habit of seeing things as they appear.

The better I am at observing moments in life, the better I'll be at showing them in my acting.

An experience teaches only the good observer; but far from seeking a lesson in it, everyone looks for an argument in experience, and everyone interprets the conclusion in his own way.

When I sit down to make a sketch from nature, the first thing I try to do is to forget that I have ever seen a picture.

I've always been a bit of a documentarian.

When dealing with children there is greater need for observing than of probing

[Sherlock Holmes:] The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.

I used to live with J.D. Souther, and I would watch him write. He's be sitting, he'd say something, and then he'd write it down. That's craft.

You have to know how to look even if you don't know what you're looking for.

Way back in my mid-20s, I started making notes. I would just jot things down: lists of street names, songs, peculiar turns of speech, jokes, whatever.

Read like a detective and write like a conscientious investigative reporter.

Holmes serves as an ideal model of how we can learn to see and think better.

If you can survive in the desert, you survive anywhere. I know more than anything life in desert. You can tell by looking at the dirt how long ago it rained, how hard it rained, how much water came through. You can by looking at a plant, a tree, from an animal's look. I can read the desert like I read my hand.

Acting has helped me understand people, not only because you are acting as a character, but also because you are watching other actors work. That really helps you identify in life when someone is acting, not being true.