I can walk through a hotel lobby and watch people at the desk and see what they’re doing. People don’t look at me. They don’t even know I’m there.

We are in a far better position to observe instincts in animals or in primitives than in ourselves. This is due to the fact that we have grown accustomed to scrutinizing our own actions and to seeking rational explanations for them.

I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.

It’s funny; recently I’ve started to notice people’s impersonations of me, and it’s basically like a hyperactive child.

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

You can use your real identity, or you can use phone numbers for something like WhatsApp, and pseudonyms for something like Instagram. But in any of those you’re not just sharing and consuming content, you are also building relationships with people and building an understanding of people.

I put up my thumb and it blotted out the planet Earth.

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate… but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

As soon as I go out into the world, I belong, in a way, to everyone else. It’s legal to follow me. It’s legal to stalk me at the beach. And I can’t call the police or ask them to leave.

A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

My personal feelings are my personal feelings. I don’t want to express them with anyone except for a very few people. It doesn’t do any good. It really doesn’t.

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.

It is indeed a matter of great difficulty to discover, and effectually to distinguish, the true motions of particular bodies from the apparent because the parts of that immovable space, in which those motions are performed, do by no means come under the observation of our senses.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

Our cellar home had a kitchen and a combination bedroom and half bath, which meant we had a sink next to the bed. We had no refrigerator, no shower or tub, and no privacy. My parents shared the bedroom with my sister and me.

There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

There is a need for aloneness, which I don’t think most people realise for an actor. It’s almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you’ll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you’re acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They’d all like sort of a chunk of you.

I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff.

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.

The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears.

Sometimes, wearing a scarf and a polo coat and no makeup and with a certain attitude of walking, I go shopping or just look at people living. But then, you know, there will be a few teenagers who are kind of sharp, and they’ll say, ‚Hey, just a minute. You know who I think that is?‘ And they’ll start tailing me. And I don’t mind.

I don’t have anything to hide.

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

I’m standing behind a wall of jokes. You don’t know about my personal life, my girlfriends, or what I do when I’m not on the road. There’s this guy, this comedian, and this is how he thinks, but people really don’t know anything about me.

Kids are watching us. I experience it every single day. They hang on my every word, what I wear, what I say.

I’m home a lot. Because I live in Ireland, we can live under the celebrity radar. I might go missing for a whole year.

Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!

It’s amazing how confused and distracted and misdirected so many people are.

I think all documentaries leave out areas of people’s lives. Which is good. There are areas that need not be explored.

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

I see drawings and pictures in the poorest of huts and the dirtiest of corners.

I’m entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they’re thinking and who they are and who’s hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what’s the story, really?

I never talk about my next project.

Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.

I need privacy. I would think that because what I do makes a lot of people happy that I might deserve a little bit of respect in return. Instead, the papers try to drag me off my pedestal.

My choices, including those related to the day-to-day aspects of life, like the use of a modest car, are related to a spiritual discernment that responds to a need that arises from looking at things, at people and from reading the signs of the times. Discernment in the Lord guides me in my way of governing.

I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.

I don’t want to write an autobiography because I would become public property with no privacy left.

I’ve learned that usually, the less I know about other people, the better off I am.

It’s dangerous to read the Internet about yourself when you’re me. Or when you’re anyone in the public eye.

I have observed that society in general always seems to honor its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.

I just want to go through Central Park and watch folks passing by. Spend the whole day watching people. I miss that.

I don’t let a lot of reporters meet my children.

Comedians are sociologists. We’re pointing out stuff that the general public doesn’t even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.

A career is born in public – talent in privacy.

Chavez, who came out of the ranks of the Venezuelan Army, is methodical and tireless. I have observed him over the course of 17 years, since his first visit to Cuba. He is an extremely humanitarian and law-abiding person; he has never taken revenge on anybody.

If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.

When you read, I’m sure you don’t realize that your eyes are going backwards and forwards and to this place and that place. Mine don’t do that.

There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!

When I came to Delhi and noticed an insider view, I felt what it was, and I was surprised to see it. It seemed as if dozens of separate governments are running at the same time in one main government. It appeared that everyone has its own fiefdom.

In order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

It was morning; through the high window I saw the pure, bright blue of the sky as it hovered cheerfully over the long roofs of the neighboring houses. It too seemed full of joy, as if it had special plans, and had put on its finest clothes for the occasion.