Detailed Observation Quotes

Astronomers are obsessed with building larger and larger telescopes. There are two promises that we make with bigger telescopes: that they can see fainter things and that they see more detail. But it's been really hard to follow through on that second promise because of atmospheric distortion.

In descriptions of nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture.

I think I have a very detailed sense of observation. I am interested in the details of people's lives and what information these details give.

You get to be analytical about the process and now I can watch the movie and see all the different connection things and see all the things that are underneath the surface.

Like a human being, the mountain is a composite creature, only to be known after many a view from many a different point, and repaying this loving study, if it is anything of a mountain at all, by a gradual revelation of personality, an increase of significance.

You have to have some kind of power of observation, almost like a trained observer.

I love being able to tell a story visually. It's something I love about making commercials, where you put a magnifying glass over the mundane and make it feel extraordinary.

The whole secret of the study of nature lies in learning how to use one's eyes.

The microscopes that magnified the tears, studied warts and all. Still life flows on.

Only reality interests me now and I know I could spend the rest of my life in copying a chair.

Hyperrealism can create an atmosphere of surrealism because nobody sees the world in such detail.

Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing.

Because I'm an art historian, I have some experience of writing that comes out of close attention. That's what really art history is. You're looking at something very closely, and you try to write in a meticulous way about it.

I used to lie down on the grass and draw the blades as they grew - until every square foot of meadow, or mossy bank, became a possession to me.

I write on scraps of paper. I do it every other day. I write about people's lives or how people look or my experiences. I'm very detailed - it's like a script.

The natural world is often bleak, but the language devoted to it is as careful as needlepoint and prophetic as well.

Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to discover that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same care and imagination.

I love films for the fact that it is like working under a microscope. It is sort of like a laboratory.

Anytime you look at someone in detail, you're putting the camera on that person. What I typically look for is one or two or three really strong characters who will hold the narrative throughout the work.

There's something in the very small minutia of life that tells us something about the big, big picture that we see every day all over the place, and so I think the more specific and creative and revelatory you are in the micro, the more powerful the macro will be.

You get a kind of surreal feeling and also it allows you to focus on the things we want you to focus on in a new way - the stuff that's very small and mundane that happens in a person's life when they're in a hotel room. There's more interest because you're seeing a puppet do things that you're very familiar with that you might not notice if it was a human doing it.