Tom Robbins Quotes

What people call serendipity sometimes is just having your eyes open.

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 not a good observer. I'm not proud of it.

When your afraid,reallyafraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world.

People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.

I wondered to myself why no one else had seen him standing so far away, before he was suddenly, impossibly saving my life. With chagrin, I realized the probable cause - no one else was as aware of Edward as I always was. No one else watched him the way I did. How pitiful.

If you stare long enough at anything, you will start to find similarities. The word “coincidence” exists in order to stop people from seeing meaning where none exists.

The more you look, the more you will see.

We see only what we know.

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

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.

The most difficult thing is what is thought to be the simplest; to really see the things which are before your eyes.

The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn't actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn't get smallpox.

It never pays to walk blindly. Especially not in your own castle where familiarity hides so much - even when we have the eyes to see.

We believe we're seeing the world just fine until it's called to our attention that we're not.

A small town has as many eyes as a fly

It takes close attention to see what is happening in front of you. It takes work, pious effort, to see what you are looking at.

Know what is behind you, and pay particular attention to anything out of place.

We all see only that which we are trained to see.

To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.

I have to see a thing a thousand times before I see it once.

People will notice the beauty of what they usually ignore ~