David Gelernter Quotes

To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand.

I guess I'm a very keen observer, and I'd like to think I have a good imagination.

I'm not such a fan of imagination. If you're alive to details, they oftentimes suggest a richer or deeper imaginative line than you would have imagined.

I like to look in the crevices of things, the nooks and the crannies. I like to see the things other people don't see, don't want to look at.

I think inspiration is always around; it's just a question of whether or not you're noticing it.

You don't know, but I'm noticing.

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

See what no one else sees. See what everyone chooses not to see... out of fear, conformity or laziness. See the whole world anew each day!

It doesn't really matter who said it - it's so obviously true. Before you can write anything, you have to notice something.

You see, but you do not observe.

I learned to observe the world around me, and to note what I saw

Be the first to see what you see as you see it.

I have a lot of energy. I have a great desire to absorb information. I’m not a sponge exactly, but I find that something I look at — just walking around Williamsburg, for example — is a great opportunity for ideas. I’ve been here before, I’ve seen things before, but now my eye gets keener and keener. So I can pick up little things: just the pattern of a brick walk, or the way they’ve attached a light to a house.

Writers, some of us, may tend to see things before other people do, things that are right there but aren't noticed in the way that a writer might notice.

I'm inspired by everything that goes on around me. I'm a sponge. I'm very analytical. I notice the things that most people don't notice.

My target audience is anyone who finds the world interesting and human behavior fascinating, terrible, inspiring, funny, and occasionally, mysterious.

I think that being perceptive and having interests is nothing but an asset.

Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

I'm trying to do what I have never done - give the impression one has on entering a room: one sees everything and at the same time nothing.

It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder.

It is the gift of seeing the life around them clearly and vividly, as something that is exciting in its own right. It is an innate gift, varying in intensity with the individual's temperament and environment.

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

He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.

I enjoy looking beyond the obvious and look at the stories happening all around me - you kind of formulate things in your mind and get excited about them.