Robert Irwin Quotes

I fear that my mind would starve and that I might find myself in danger if I had no visual information, that it's chiefly the light, the shapes, the spaces, the colors that I see that compel me to keep moving forward in life and that keep me safe.

When you turn from one room to the next, when your animal senses no longer perceive the sounds of the dishwasher, the ticking clock, the smell of a chicken roasting - the kitchen and all its seemingly discrete bits dissolve into nothingness - or into waves of probability.

I know how to read people. When you grow up in a rough environment, you have to have a sixth sense.

The difference between being a victim and a survivor is often a low level of situational awareness. You can't be a super-spy, watchful and paranoid every day. But I am more watchful than the average American.

I doubt very much that the chief executives of any of the Fortune 500 corporations can name five edible plants, five native grasses, or five migratory birds within walking distance of their homes, or name the soil series upon which their house sits. And I would contend that if you don't know where you are, you are in fact nowhere at all.

If you know you're going to be outside, you have to be a little bit more in tune, so that you don't get distracted by what's going on and focus better.

I get a feeling about where a teammate is going to be. A lot of times, I can turn and pass without even looking.

If you're in business or politics, you need to have an intense understanding of what's going on around you.

I have always had a predominantly visual approach to my environment.

If you're inside the box and a cross is coming, sometimes you need, as we say in Spanish, to smell the intuition, to smell where the cross is going.

Most good players play on intuition. Everyone has a little, but I don't know if you can learn it.

Over the years, you get better at timing because you've been through the situations thousands of times. The ball goes over your head; he passes you on the right, left. Eventually, you just know what you have to do.

You mostly defend with your head, always reacting to the movement of opponents and teammates. I had to become more aware of that, play with much more consideration, the way you drive a car: you always need to look left, right, and the rear mirror to see what's going on around you.

People think catching a football one-handed is a technique, but it's more a reaction. Because you really don't think about it when you're doing it. You just do it. I couldn't sit there and try to teach someone how to catch a one-handed football.

When you're staring at your phone to navigate and being led places, you do become less aware of your environment, and the journey becomes kind of automated. There is an aliveness that comes with having to puzzle out directions for yourself. And you have to ask other people for help, which creates opportunity for social connection.

In my other work as a self-defense instructor, I have taught the importance of listening to one's gut instincts.

If you depend on where the chestnuts are going to be, and where the deer are, you have to be attuned to the outside world.

Anybody who has watched me play knows I'm not one of the fastest guys, but I understand what's going on around me and what to look for. I know what the defense is doing.

Colour could give rise to sensations which would interfere with our conception of space.

The map isn't always the territory, and you have to kind of walk through it to get a feel for it.

I think a good quarterback or a good linebacker, a good safety, even though you have a lot of bodies moving out there, it slows down for them and they can really see it. Then there are other guys that it's a lot of guys moving and they don't see anything. It's like being at a busy intersection, just cars going everywhere. The guys that can really sort it out, they see the game at a slower pace and can really sort out and decipher all that movement, which is hard. But experience certainly helps that, yes.

The pace of change is so great, there is always something else going on. What that says to me is that you have to have strategic vision and peripheral vision. Strategic vision is the ability to look ahead and peripheral vision is the ability to look around, and both are important.

Children should be introduced right from the start to the potentialities of their environment, to the physical and psychological laws that govern the visual world, and to the supreme enjoyment that comes from participating in the creative process of giving form to one's living space.

Use your eyes. Do not enter unfamiliar areas that you cannot observe first. Make it a practice to swing wide around corners, use window glass for rearward visibility, and get something solid behind you when you pause.

Space and time are "sensed" not seen. They are created in consciousness which is spaceless and timeless.