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Looking Quotes

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Looking Quotes

“He thought of one of those girls frowning over a book, pushing a lock of brown hair back over one oddly curved ear. He thought of the way she looked at him, brows narrowed in suspicion. Scornful and alert. Awake. Alive. He imagined her as a mindless servant and felt a rush of something he couldn't quite untangle- horror, and also a sort of terrible relief. No ensorcelled human could look at him as she did.”

“As a panting Tracy Ferris scrambled into the life-pod, this thought was precisely what was running through her already agitated mind. From the very beginning of their association, she’d had a bad feeling about Brandon Carver. Something about that guy just never seemed to fit. Sure, he was good looking – but so were many of the other out of work space bums hitch-hiking from place to place she’d also had the misfortune to meet.”

“If you are looking at anything from one point, from one angle, you can never attain wisdom because wisdom is to see all the things from every point, from every angle!”

“Wonders amaze me. They can aim wanderlessly in any forest, be it of dark trees or lighted bushes. And apparently, as per what I’ve heard, they can buy stuff that’s on sale, but only if and when they feel wonderfully wonderful. Because otherwise they wouldn’t really be themselves, which would be a problem for them, because if they aren’t what they are - they can’t exist, and if they don’t exist – that makes them invisible and silent to all the wandering people, who may or may not be looking for them to sell themselves to.”

“I have been finding treasures in places I did not want to search. I have been hearing wisdom from tongues I did not want to listen. I have been finding beauty where I did not want to look. And I have learned so much from journeys I did not want to take. Forgive me, O Gracious One; for I have been closing my ears and eyes for too long. I have learned that miracles are only called miracles because they are often witnessed by only those who can can see through all of life's illusions. I am ready to see what really exists on other side, what exists behind the blinds, and taste all the ugly fruit instead of all that looks right, plump and ripe.”

“Reading a screenful of information is quite a different thing from looking. It is a digital form of exploration in which the eye moves along an endless broken line. The relationship to the interlocutor in communication, like the relationship to knowledge in data-handling, is similar: tactile and exploratory. A computer-generated voice, even a voice over the telephone, is a tactile voice, neutral and functional. It is no longer in fact exactly a voice, any more than looking at a screen is exactly looking. The whole paradigm of the sensory has changed. The tactility here is not the organic sense of touch: it implies merely an epidermal contiguity of eye and image, the collapse of the aesthetic distance involved in looking. We draw ever closer to the surface of the screen; our gaze is, as it were, strewn across the image. We no longer have the spectator's distance from the stage - all theatrical conventions are gone. That we fall so easily into the screen's coma of the imagination is due to the fact that the screen presents a perpetual void that we are invited to fill. Proxemics of images: promiscuity of images: tactile pornography of images. Yet the image is always light years away. It is invariably a tele-image - an image located at a very special kind of distance which can only be described as unbridgeable by the body. The body can cross the distance that separates it from language, from the stage, or from the mirror - this is what keeps it human and allows it to partake in exchange. But the screen is merely virtual - and hence unbridgeable. This is why it partakes only of that abstract - definitively abstract - form known as communication.”

“You shouldn't look at me like that.' His voice had thickened. 'Like what?' 'You know exactly how you're looking at me.' He closed his eyes. 'Actually, you might not, and that's why I should leave.' 'How am I looking at you, Hawke?' His eyes opened. 'Like I don't deserve to be looked at. Not by you.' 'Not true,' I told him. 'I wish that was the case. Gods, I do. I need to leave.' He rose and backed up, his stare lingering. I didn't think he wanted to leave at all. He took a deep breath. 'Goodnight, Poppy.”

“When I find her, she's standing by some boulders near the rim of her clearing. Ivy's holding a rock as she looks under it, as if she'll find me under there. "Ivy? I'm right here." She doesn't answer. She doesn't even turn around. She just sets the rock down and moves on to the next one, calling out my name. "Rylan?" "Ivy, I'm right behind you." Why won't she look at me? "I cannot find you...Rylan." Ivy talks to herself as she lifts up each rock. "Where did you go? Why are you...not here?" "But I am, Ivy. I'm right here." Ivy finishes searching under the rocks and for a moment gazes out into the dense trees. "Where are you, Rylan? Why am I...alone?" "You're not!" I cry out in frustration. "I'm right behind you! Just turn around and look!" She does. Ivy turns around and walks toward me until we're only a foot apart. But she isn't looking at me. She's looking over my shoulder, just like Dad. "Do you see me now?" I furiously waved my hands in front of her face. "I'm right here." When Ivy speaks again, she's talking to herself. "Rylan? Where are you?" She stretches out her hand and touches me with it. It goes right through me. Like I'm mist. Like I'm a ghost. Like I wasn't even here to begin with. "Ivy!”

“...The editors of (i)Life(i) rejected Kerész'a photographs when he arrived in the United States in 1937 because, they said, his images 'spoke too much'; they made us reflect, suggested a meaning — a different meaning from the literal one. Ultimately, Photography is subversive not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is (i)pensive(i), when it thinks.”

“The task of the modern individual is to move appropriately and effectively from disengaged spectator to attentive perceiver in order to slide easily into the social order. The starer, in contrast, is an undisciplined spectator arrested in an earlier developmental stage or one resistant to the attentiveness of the modern networker. The starer is a properly attentive spectator befuddled, halted in mid-glance, mobility throttled, processing checked, network run amuck...So the challenge of proper looking is converting the impulse to stare into attention, which is socially acceptable. (21-22)”

“Your suffering needs to be respected. Don't try to ignore the hurt, because it is real. Just let the hurt soften you instead of hardening you. Let the hurt open you instead of closing you. Let the hurt send you looking for those who will accept you instead of hiding from those who reject you.”