Alice Oswald Quotes

When I look at a pie chart, I just go numb.

A picture is worth a thousand words. An interface is worth a thousand pictures.

Time-space as commonly understood, in the sense of the distance measured between two time-points, is the result of time calculation.

Personally, I'm not very keen on the visualization of absolutely everything.

A book no more contains reality than a clock contains time. A book may measure so-called reality as a clock measures so-called time; a book may create an illusion of reality as a clock creates an illusion of time; a book may be real, just as a clock is real (both more real, perhaps, than those ideas to which they allude); but let's not kid ourselves - all a clock contains is wheels and springs and all a book contains is sentences.

We should always bear in mind that numbers represent a simplification of reality.

The shortest unit of time in the multiverse is the New York Second, defined as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind you honking.

Design has a powerful impact on the viewer. It has authority, and data also has the same air of authenticity and detail. It can be hard to argue with a graph, and it's hard to argue with data. So to combine data with a strong visual impact creates a powerful message.

Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

I spent uncounted hours sitting at the bow looking at the water and the sky, studying each wave, different from the last, seeing how it caught the light, the air, the wind; watching patterns, the sweep of it all, and letting it take me. The sea.

There's nothing like a nice piece of hickory.

Alice: "How long is forever?" White Rabbit: "Sometimes, just one second."

Gigantic second and third growth trees are found in the redwoods, forming magnificent temple-like circles around charred ruins more than a thousand years old.

We ask for long life, but 'tis deep life, or noble moments that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.

There must be something innate about maps, about this one specific way of picturing our world and our relation to it, that charms us, calls to us, won’t let us look anywhere else in the room if there’s a map on the wall.

What do you want a clock for?” “To find out what time it is,” I said. “I think that’s the usual purpose.

One cannot walk down an avenue, converse with a friend, enter a building, browse beneath the sandstone arches of an old arcade without meeting an instrument of time. Time is visible in all places. Clock towers, wristwatches, church bells divide years into months, months into days, days into hours, hours into seconds, each increment of time marching after the other in perfect succession. And beyond any particular clock, a vast scaffold of time, stretching across the universe, lays down the law of time equally for all.

I follow in building the principles which nature has used in its domain.

My furniture, boxes, and turnings are simple, practical designs for everyday use. I love the grain and beauty of wood. Each piece of lumber is a work of art, after all, and I'd like to honor that gift and pass it on for someone else to appreciate.

What do years have to do with age?

When Moses was alive, these pyramids were a thousand years old. Here began the history of architecture. Here people learned to measure time by a calendar, to plot the stars by astronomy and chart the earth by geometry. And here they developed that most awesome of all ideas - the idea of eternity.

These are the days after. Everything now is measured by after.

I took out my watch and listened to it clicking away, not knowing it couldn't even lie

The bell strikes one. We take no note of time But from its loss.

When you visualize the recent past, do you see it as being somewhere over on the left?