Sonya Hartnett Quotes

Seeing is a gift that comes with practice.

“How ever did you see that?” “Because I looked for it.”

You see, but you do not observe.

But when we observe, we are forced to pay attention. We have to move from passive absorption to active awareness. We have to engage.

The eye should learn to listen before it looks.

[To become a poet] The most important thing is to pay attention. The next would probably be to read; it's so important to pay attention. It keeps you from being bored, and I might add it keeps you from being boorish.

Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!

The eyes see not what is before them when the mind is intent on other matters.

Obviously we can't do what we do if no one is paying attention.

For God's sake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you.

Be slow of tongue and quick of eye.

It's no good operating on eyes if your eyes are asleep.

He who hopes for spring with upturned eye never sees so small a thing as Draba. He who despairs of spring with downcast eye steps on it, unknowing. He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance.

To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.

I give life to that which I notice. What I don't notice dies.

Look up and down and round about you.!

Photography is simply a function of noticing things.

In naming that which is right before me, that which I'd otherwise miss, the invisible becomes visible.

If you are wired to your memory, repetitions will happen and redundancy will come; but if you are paying attention, that changes your ability to look at things.

Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it

A small country town is not the place in which one would choose to quarrel with a wife; every human being in such places is a spy.

What you look at hard seems to look at you.

There is much worth noticing that often escapes the eye.

Normally I didn’t see a great deal. I didn’t hear a great deal either. I didn’t pay attention. Strictly speaking I wasn’t there. Strictly speaking I believe I’ve never been anywhere.