External Viewpoint Quotes

Men are always optimists when they look inwards, and pessimists when they look round them.

You have to be an outsider to write.

The most important thing that the person at the White House knows when he talks to you is that you are not in there.

I like what a third man brings. A kind of oblique vision, seeing something in the material that you didn't know was there. As a comedian, I'm always listening to the audience. And in movies, sometimes the only audience you have is the producer and the director. I like having someone else's opinion, especially if you're on the same wavelength.

It's hard to understand the films that you're in, because you never truly get to see them.

I think novelists perform many useful tasks for their fellow citizens, but one of the most valuable is this: to enable us to see ourselves as others see us.

The circumstances of others seem good to us, while ours seem good to others.

The guest will judge better of a feast than the cook

I don't have to stand back as an outsider to look at society.

We're not on the outside looking in, we're on the outside looking out.

There isn't much room for an outsider point of view in print any more.

In my life, I've been able to really examine society in a way most people who aren't outsiders don't get a chance to do.

Sometimes you get a flash of what you look like to other people.

Who apart from ourselves, can see any difference between our victories and our defeats?

The writer works on the inside and the critic works on the outside. I don't know what it looks like on the outside, sometimes. It's not that I'm not interested-it's not where I live. I live inside the story.

To contemplate a thing implies maintaining oneself OUTSIDE it, resolved to keep a distance between it and ourselves.

External scouting is of limited value if it's not teamed with rigorous self- examination. Successful coaches or managers have learned the value of utilizing an outside opinion to give them a fresh look at their personnel. This unbiased view provides an even greater insight, which in turn helps the coach develop flexibility within the team.

To look at ourselves from afar, to make the subjective suddenly objective: this gives us a psychic shock.

I can understand why those primitive desert people think a camera steals their soul. It is unnatural to see yourself from the outside.

Extremely foolish advice is likely to be uttered by those who are looking at the laboring vessel from the land.

An expert is just somebody from out of town with slides.

I always do my rap from the outside looking in. Like I do my rap as if I'm looking at me rap.

I guess a witness is all I am. I think as a writer, you're pretty removed. Writing is a very selfish, individualistic pursuit. So in that sense I'm a witness because I'm not participating.

The light that a man receives by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which comes from his own understanding and judgment, which is ever infused and drenched in his affections and customs.

I never see things I make in the same way that the audience does. You can never do that.