Lisa Unger Quotes

I think it's true that, as is often observed, the writer is always an outsider. A writer is someone who is telling stories about what's going on, which is something you can't do if you're totally caught up in the moment.

It is often true that those who sit in the wings can see more than the players.

You have to be an outsider to write.

Writers are outsiders. Even when we seem like insiders, we're outsiders. We have to be. Our noses pressed to the glass, we notice everything. We mull and interpret. We store away clues, details that may be useful to us later.

I was always an outsider, always standing outside, observing and trying to figure things out. Which is exactly what you need to do as a writer, I suppose.

To be able to observe with a stranger's eye helps one to see with an artist's eye. What alienates us inspires.

To see some truths you must stand outside and look in.

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

Men and things have each their proper perspective; to judge rightly of some it is necessary to see them near, of others we can never judge rightly but at a distance.

I've always been a visual person, I'm formerly a graphic designer. I've always seen myself as an observer. I like to maintain objectivity and don't get too intimately involved in my subjects.

It is only with distance that we are able to turn our powers of observation on ourselves, thus fashioning stories in which we are characters.

The poets down here don't write nothin' at all, they just stand back and let it all be.

It's hard to look at things that are too close.

To write well about the elegant world you have to know it and experience it to the depths of your being... what matters is not whether you love it or hate it, but only to be quite clear about your position regarding it.

I write in my own journal when something extraordinary or funny happens. And there's some nice imagery in there. I don't think of what to do with it.

For a fiction writer, a storyteller, the world is full of stories, and when a story is there, it's there, and you just reach up and pick it.

The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.

I used to go outside every day and invent these elaborate worlds and scenarios in my head, and when I grew too old for playing pretend, I started to write everything down instead.

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!

Mindfulness is like a microscope; it is neither an offensive nor defensive weapon in relation to the germs we observe through it. The function of the microscope is just to clearly present what is there.

It's hard to see things when you're too close. Take a step back and look.

I became an actress because I discovered the world of the imagination when I was about 14 or so and the concept that you could engage in this amazing world of storytelling. I saw a production of Hamlet, and I didn't know Hamlet died in the end.

Any fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw with veracity.

If I ever teach writing again, I’d say the first lesson is to listen.

I do not understand the world, but I watch it's progress.