Tim O'Brien Quotes

Perceptibility is a kind of attentiveness.

One looks, looks long, and the world comes in.

Don't be afraid to see what you see.

Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.

He who closes his eyes sees nothing, even in the full light of day.

Most people don't see what's going on around them. That's my principal message to writers: 'For God's sake, keep your eyes open. Notice what's going on around you.'

If you pay attention to the world, it's an amazing place. If you don't, it's whatever you think it is.

What I do think is really interesting is that, as I get older and more mature, I'm really attuned to how frightening this world is that we live in.

We never see a tree except through the image that we have of it, the concept of that tree; but the concept, the knowledge, the experience, is entirely different from the actual tree. Look at a tree and you will find how extraordinarily difficult it is to see it completely, so that no image, no screen, comes between the seeing and the actual fact. By completely I mean with the totality of your mind and heart, not a fragment of it.

But we shall not know the world by looking at it; we know it by looking at the hovering fly.

All the technique in the world doesn't compensate for the inability to notice.

The more you look, the more you see.

One can travel this world and see nothing. To achieve understanding it is necessary not to see many things, but to look hard at what you do see.

The more you look, the more you will see.

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.

Don't let your eyes refuse to seeDon't let your ears refuse to hear

This is not magic. This is the way the world is, only very few people take the time to stop and note it.

We have ... dreamed so much and observed so little, that our imaginations have grown larger than the world we live in, and our judgments have dwindled down to a point.

Knowing it and seeing it are two different things.

A curiously interested observer sees a great deal, a scientifically interested observer is worthy of all honor, and anxiously interested observer sees what others do not see, but a crazy observer sees perhaps the most, his observation is more intense and more persistent, just as the senses of certain animals are sharper than those of man.

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing.

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.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

If you slow things down, you notice things you hadn't seen before.