Insightful Observation Quotes

There is this tendency to think that if you could only find the magic way, then you could become a poet. "Tell me how to become a poet. Tell me what to do." . . . What makes you a poet is a gift for language, an ability to see into the heart of things, and an ability to deal with important unconscious material. When all these things come together, you're a poet. But there isn't one little gimmick that makes you a poet. There isn't any formula for it.

There is no need to create. Genius comes only to those who know how to use their eyes and their intelligence.

Creativity has much to do with experience, observation and imagination, and if any one of those key elements is missing, it doesn't work.

By all means examine the games of the great chess players, but don't swallow them whole. Their games are valuable not for their separate moves, but for their vision of chess, their way of thinking.

...Though there's reasons in things as nobody knows on---- that's pretty much what I've made out; yet some folks are so wise they'll find you fifty reasons straight off, and all the while the real reason's winking at 'em in the corner, and they niver see't.

True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.

A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.

I think Black intellectuals see too deeply. That's the problem. It's a cause of anxiety, because we see things differently.

An essential part of seeing clearly is finding the willingness to look closely and to go beyond our own ideas.

Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.

Experience teaches us not to assume that the obvious is clearly understood

Any idiot can see something wrong. But can you see what is right?

There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better understanding of what people are really like and what humanity is supposed to mean - hell, I know that.

It seems that the analysis of character is the highest human entertainment. And literature does it, unlike gossip, without mentioning names.

Genius seems to consist merely in trueness of sight, in using such words as show that the man was an eye-witness, and not a repeater of what was told.

Once you know that every moment and every person and every situation has something to teach you, you're a student all day. You know it's the depth of your observation that is the issue - not how much the world has to show you.

I watch games a little differently, maybe, than other people do, because I'm constantly asking myself why did that happen, what's really going on here?