Watcher Quotes

What about animals slaughtered for our consumption? who among us would be able to continue eating pork chops after visiting a factory farm in which pigs are half-blind and cannot even properly walk, but are just fattened to be killed? And what about, say, torture and suffering of millions we know about, but choose to ignore? Imagine the effect of having to watch a snuff movie portraying what goes on thousands of times a day around the world: brutal acts of torture, the picking out of eyes, the crushing of testicles -the list cannot bear recounting. Would the watcher be able to continue going on as usual? Yes, but only if he or she were able somehow to forget -in an act which suspended symbolic efficiency -what had been witnessed. This forgetting entails a gesture of what is called fetishist disavowal: "I know it, but I don't want to know that I know, so I don't know." I know it, but I refuse to fully assume the consequences of this knowledge, so that I can continue acting as if I don't know it. ~ Slavoj Zizek

I sat there and forgot and forgot, until what remained was the river that went by and I who watched ... Eventually the watcher joined the river, and there was only one of us. I believe it was the river.
Even the anatomy of a river was laid bare. Not far downstream was a dry channel where the river had run once, and part of the way to come to know a thing is through its death. But years ago I had known the river when it flowed through this now dry channel, so I could enliven its stony remains with the waters of memory. ~ Norman Maclean

Breeze which had crossed a thousand miles of wheat-lands bellied her taffeta skirt in a line so graceful, so full of animation and moving beauty, that the heart of a chance watcher on the lower road tightened to wistfulness over her quality of suspended freedom. She lifted her arms, she leaned back against the wind, her skirt dipped and flared, a lock blew wild. A girl on a hilltop; credulous, plastic, young; drinking the air as she longed to drink life. The eternal aching comedy of expectant youth. ~ Sinclair Lewis

In this image (watching sensual murder through a peephole) Lorrain embodies the criminal delight of decadent art. The watcher who records the crimes (both the artist and consumer of art) is constructed as marginal, powerless to act, and so exculpated from action, passive subject of a complex pleasure, condemning and yet enjoying suffering imposed on others, and condemning himself for his own enjoyment. In this masochistic celebration of disempowerment, the sharpest pleasure recorded is that of the death of some important part of humanity. The dignity of human life is the ultimate victim of Lorrain's art, thrown away on a welter of delighted self-disgust. ~ Jennifer Birkett

Then felt I like like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Like stout Cortes when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific-and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise
Silent upon a peak in Darien ~ John Keats

El duende is literally the goblin wind or force behind a person's actions and creative life, including the way they walk, the sound of their voice, even the way they lift their little finger. It is a term used in flamenco dance, and is also used to describe the ability to "think" in poetic images. Among Latina curanderas who recollect story, it is understood as the ability to be filled with spirit that is more than one's own spirit. Whether one is the artist or whether one is the watcher, listener, or reader, when el duende is present, one sees it, hears it, reads it, feels it underneath the dance, the music, the words, the art; one knows it is there. When el duende is not present, one knows that too. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I was at the South-Eastern wall, and looking out through The Great Embrasure towards the Three Silver-fire Holes, that shone before the Thing That Nods, away down, far in the South-East. Southward of this, but nearer, there rose the vast bulk of the South-East Watcher - The Watching Thing of the South-East. And to the right and to the left of the squat monster burned the Torches; maybe half-a-mile upon each side; yet sufficient light they threw to show the lumbered-forward head of the never-sleeping Brute. ~ William Hope Hodgson

This, right here, beats for you. Do you feel it Amabel? It needs you and only you." He said, still looking into my eyes as a tear fell down my cheek. ~ Y.I. Leonard

From Woody's Restaurant, Middlebury"


Today, noon, a young macho friendly waiter and three diners,
business types - two males, one female -
are in a quandary about the name of the duck paddling
Otter Creek,
the duck being brown, but too large to be a female mallard.
They really want to know, and I'm the human-watcher behind the nook
of my table,
camouflaged by my stillness and nonchalant plumage.
They really want to know.
This sighting I record in the back of my Field Guide to People. ~ Greg Delanty

I was always such a people-watcher. I would sit on street corners alone and watch people and make up stories about them in my head. Then, all of a sudden, I was the one being watched. ~ Alanis Morissette

The discretion of the watcher versus the privacy of the watched was just another arms race; this one, I could see, would run and run. ~ Ken MacLeod

I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. ~ George R R Martin

It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise, that you are not the mind, that you are the witness, a watcher. And this process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion. Because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty ... ~ Rajneesh

Bliss follows witnessing - and that is going to be your meditation. Witness your body as separate, witness your mind as separate. Remain rooted in witnessing: "I am only a watcher." That is going to transform your whole life, it is going to give you the ultimate. ~ Rajneesh

The sand looked so beautiful then, so many little individual grains in the light of the night, giving the watcher the childhood feeling of infinite things finally understood, the humiliating feeling of the watcher's nothingness. ~ Ayi Kwei Armah

I'm not a royal family watcher. ~ Bill Nighy

I'd never had a host that was capable of superstition. It was an interesting sensation. Like knowing you were being watched without being able to find the watcher. It raised goose bumps on the nape of my neck. ~ Stephenie Meyer

Sometimes when I hear commentating, it's sickening. People who never played the game, people who never played in the league have an opinion, and that's all it is. You are here to educate the watcher or the viewer. Sometimes it comes off as personal. ~ Kevin Garnett

Life never turns out quite the way you dream it will. You have to make things happen.
Luke...Sky Watcher ~ Ella Emerson

That was great. They're calling him Buttwatcher now. Just "Watcher" in front of the teachers, but everybody knows what he's watching. ~ Orson Scott Card

All joking aside, I'm a television watcher and I get frustrated with shows sometimes when they set up puzzles and then they don't give answers. It's just more questions and more questions. ~ Sarah Michelle Gellar

The power of prayer is still the greatest ever known in this endless eternal universe.-The Watcher in The Avengers #14 ~ Stan Lee

I am an old school sort of syndicated cartoon watcher. I'm a big fan of Voltron, too. ~ Seamus Dever

The thing about being a watcher is this: You are never really a part of things, especially if the person you must watch is yourself, always, just to make sure no one ever really sees you. . ~ George Hodgman

I was an avid anime watcher until I was about 10, when I moved to manga. I think I am influenced by Osamu Tezuka's and Walt Disney's works which I watched during that time, such as Tetsuwan Atom and 101 Dalmatians. ~ Akira Toriyama

When women reassert their relationship with the wildish nature, they are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, a visionary, an oracle, an inspiratrice, an intuitive, a maker, a creator, an inventor, and a listener who guide, suggest, and urge vibrant life in the inner and outer world. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

And, so to tell more about the South Watcher. A million years gone, as I have told, came it out from the blackness of the South, and grew steadily nearer through twenty thousand years; but so slow that in no one year could a man perceive that it had moved. ~ William Hope Hodgson

Walk, but make walking a meditation; walk knowingly Breathe, but let your breathing become a constant meditation; breathe knowingly. The breath going in: watch it. The breath going out: watch it. Eat, but eat with full awareness. Take a bite, chew it, but go on watching. Let the watcher be there in every moment, whatsoever you are doing. ~ Rajneesh

Who is watching the Watchers? ~ James Hauenstein

The house of fiction has in short not one window, but a million, ... but they are, singly, as nothing without the posted presence of the watcher. ~ Henry James

As you watch your mind, you discover your self as the watcher. When you stand motionless, only watching, you discover your self as the light behind the watcher. The source of light is dark, unknown is the source of knowledge. That source alone is. Go back to that source and abide there.
"I Am That" - pg 188 ~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

If death becomes cheap it is the watcher, not the dying, who is poisoned. ~ Enid Bagnold

There is no river in the world to be compared for majesty and the witchery of association, to the Thames; it impresses even the unreading and unimaginative watcher with a solemnity which he cannot account for, as it rolls under his feet and swirls past the buttresses of its many bridges; he may think, as he experiences the unusual effect, that it is the multiplicity of buildings which line its banks, or the crowd of sea-craft which floats upon its surface, or its own extensive spread. In reality he feels, although he cannot explain it, the countless memories which hang for ever like a spiritual fog over its rushing current.
("The Phantom Model") ~ Hume Nisbet

The best player of a game is the watcher - ask him. ~ Idries Shah

The Orient is watched, since its almost (but never quite) offensive behavior issues out of a reservoir of infinite peculiarity; the European, whose sensibility tours the Orient, is a watcher, never involved, always detached, always ready for new examples of what the Description de l'Egypte called "bizarre jouissance." The Orient becomes a living tableau of queerness. ~ Edward W. Said

Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer. ~ Louise Gluck

You know, my name ... comes from the word shomer, guardian, watcher. My ancestors were guardians of the ghetto wall in Chortkov. And I believe Hashem [Orthodox for God] actually gave me that name. One of my roles, very important in the United States senate, is to be a shomer
to be a or the shomer Yisrael. And I will continue to be that with every bone in my body ... ~ Charles Schumer

You can only become the observer of life, if you can perceive the world with the mind and not with the sensory organs. ~ Roshan Sharma

Oh, the jobs people work at! Out west near Hawtch-Hawtch there's a Hawtch-Hawtcher bee watcher, his job is to watch. Is to keep both his eyes on the lazy town bee, a bee that is watched will work harder you see. So he watched and he watched, but in spite of his watch that bee didn't work any harder not mawtch. So then somebody said "Our old bee-watching man just isn't bee watching as hard as he can, he ought to be watched by another Hawtch-Hawtcher! The thing that we need is a bee-watcher-watcher!". Well, the bee-watcher-watcher watched the bee-watcher. He didn't watch well so another Hawtch-Hawtcher had to come in as a watch-watcher-watcher! And now all the Hawtchers who live in Hawtch-Hawtch are watching on watch watcher watchering watch, watch watching the watcher who's watching that bee. You're not a Hawtch-Watcher you're lucky you see! ~ Dr. Seuss

I learned my color in Europe. I've always been a colorist, I think. I started when I was very young, being a bird-watcher, fascinated by the bird colors. ~ Ellsworth Kelly

I can't say that I have ever been fanatical about a show. To be honest, I'm not a big TV watcher. When I do watch TV, I watch the news. ~ Matthew Davis

An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts. ~ Albert Camus

I don't think I'm more of a screenwriter than I am a fiction writer. I'm more of a reader than a film-watcher, so I imagine that I'm not approaching fiction or films in a particularly cinematic way. ~ Miranda July

You say wicked like it's a bad thing. ~ Deborah Blake

A big reason why I'm not a big TV watcher is that in my formative years as a viewer, there wasn't that much great television on, or at least, television that appealed to me. ~ Jack Falahee

I'm a casual watcher. I like to stream everything. ~ Tyler Oakley

I'm simply saying that there is a way to be sane. I'm saying that you can get rid of all this insanity created by the past in you. Just by being a simple witness of your thought processes.

It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you. Just witnessing, not interfering not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say "this is good, this is bad," you have already jumped onto the thought process.

It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise, that you are not the mind, that you are the witness, a watcher.

And this process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion. Because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty.

That's the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment that you become for the first time an unconditioned, sane, really free human being. ~ Osho

Night poured over the desert. It came suddenly, in purple. In the clear air, the stars drilled down out of the sky, reminding any thoughtful watcher that it is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated. When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way. ~ Terry Pratchett

I'm always a people watcher. They always had us do that at the University of Connecticut where I went for my training. I got my B.F.A. in Acting there. ~ Austin Stowell

Is there some general guideline by which we might measure our daily life, minute to minute, to see if we are on track? We can examine who is the doer of our actions. If we find ourselves doing whatever is needed without drama or burden, then the Self is the doer, and no karma or suffering will accrue. Drama and burden is our thumbnail litmus test of right living. Be the watcher of your mind as you go through the day and see why you do the things you do, and who is the doer of these actions. ~ Dennis Hill

The pejorative parigüayo, Watchers agree, is a corruption of the English neologism "party watcher." The word came into common usage during the First American Occupation of the DR, which ran from 1916-1924. (You didn't know we were occupied twice in the twentieth century? Don't worry, when you have kids they won't know the U.S. occupied Iraq either.) ~ Junot Diaz

Anger will come and go and the watcher abides. Sadness comes and passes by and the witness remains ~ Rajneesh

At 09:22, Mitchell radioed down. "We're in position."
Pete peered up into the canopy, but of course he couldn't see a thing. "How's it looking up there?"
"Five by five."
He snorted at Mitchell's cheery misuse of the phrase. "Thank you, Faith."
"Any time, Giles. Now go be a good watcher and keep us clear."
"Roger that. Out. ~ Rachel Haimowitz

The watcher on the walls. The sword in the darkness. ~ George R R Martin

It must be stressed that there is nothing insulting about looking at people as animals. We are animals, after all. Homo sapiens is a species of primate, a biological phenomenon dominated by biological rules, like any other species. Human nature is no more than one particular kind of animal nature. Agreed, the human species is an extraordinary animal; but all other species are also extraordinary animals, each in their own way, and the scientific man-watcher can bring many fresh insights to the study of human affairs if he can retain this basic attitude of evolutionary humility. ~ Desmond Morris

I might not say much but I'm a watcher
and a thinker. ~ Tina J. Richardson

I think whether you're a movie critic and have seen a million movies, or you're just a normal popcorn movie watcher, you can tell the difference when someone is just laying it on too thick. ~ Josh Peck

I am roots in the earth. I am water that flows. I am grounded. I am Watcher. ~ Veronica Wolff

I am a people watcher and I have a very good memory. ~ Brian Jacques

I've always been a people-watcher, and as an actor, later, I just mined all those little details. ~ Sissy Spacek

Henry Ward Beecher, so the story goes, was once asked by a young preacher how he could keep his congregation wide awake and attentive during his sermons. Beecher replied that he always had a man watch for sleepers, with instructions, as soon as he saw anyone start nodding or dozing, to hasten to the pulpit and wake up the preacher. Aren't you and I usually less sensible? Would we not be inclined to have the watcher wake up not ourselves but the fellows caught sleeping? In other words, aren't we disposed always to blame others? ~ B.C. Forbes

Eat, taste the food, and still remember that you are the watcher. ~ Rajneesh

if a man chooses to be promiscuous, he may still turn up his nose at promiscuity. He may still demand a woman be faithful to him, to save him from his own lust. But women have lust, too. Why should they be relegated to the position of custodian of emotions, watcher of the infants, feeder of soul,body and pride of man? ~ Sylvia Plath

No religion is suddenly rejected by any people; it is rather gradually outgrown. None sees a religion die; dead religions are like dead languages and obsolete customs: the decay is long and - like the glacier march - is perceptible only to the careful watcher by comparisons extending over long periods. ~ Charles Bradlaugh

Only one thing is harassing you: your own idea of achieving things as quickly as possible. But meditation is not to be achieved; it is already there. It has only to be discovered. And discovery needs only one thing: a silent watcher. ~ Osho

When you're a kid you just think about where you are going to be to put yourself in a position for the next scoring chance. But as you develop, you start to do things that may not catch the eye of the normal football watcher, the dropping back, the closing down. ~ Michael Owen

This group is known as the watchers. And to be a watcher is a woman's fortune.
He said that last bit as though it was the greatest honor girls like us could ever attain. My thoughts turned grim. It was once considered an honor to be a sacrificial lamb, too. ~ Veronica Wolff

I didn't quite understand the DVD thing and why my husband was mailing it back. I couldn't quite wrap my head around it. But now that I'm deeply in, as a watcher of content, what a brilliant business model. As a consumer, it's empowering to choose what I want to watch and when I want to watch it. I have three small children, so I need that flexibility, in order to really get into a show. And being on a Netflix show, it's perfect timing. I feel so grateful. ~ Carrie-Anne Moss

For the observant, cultures matter!
For the watcher, they are only humans! ~ Noha Alaa El-Din

The Watcher. The Watcher of what? Of teenage girls forced to spend their holiday break filming cable TV specials? ~ Mara Purnhagen

Kit leaned forward. "But if you're up to something, know that I'm ready. The days of Kit the Clueless are over. I'm watching you guys like a ... like a ... like a really good watcher of things." He cocked his head. "An owl, maybe?"
"Up to something?" I flapped a breezy hand. "Pshh. Relax."
"Kit's not so good with similes," I said, wiping down a steel counter. "I would've gone with a hawk, or maybe the Hubble telescope. I guess owl works. ~ Kathy Reichs

At home there tarries like a lurking snake,
Biding its time, a wrath unreconciled,
A wily watcher, passionate to slake,
In blood, resentment for a murdered child. ~ Aeschylus

To the bird watcher, the suburbanite who derives joy from birds in his garden, the hunter, the fisherman or the explorer of wild regions, anything that destroys the wildlife of an area for even a single year has deprived him of pleasure to which he has a legitimate right. ~ Rachel Carson

Standing there small among the boxes of Kandy Kakes that rose like brownish cartoon cliffs around him, he resembled the videos I'd seen of sea lions floating angelically among the kelp, black bodies filmed from below, their shapes cut out in bright sunlight, bodies mistakable for those of a human being. I felt the memory of a shadowy arm around me, a watcher again, sitting there on the couch with my boyfriend, watching the animals become prey. Somewhere there were giant whales feeding on creatures too small to see, pressing them against fronds of baleen with a tongue the size of a sedan. There were polar bears killing seals, tearing ovoid chunks from out of their smooth, round bellies. In the surrounding vastness of the warehouse, I heard something scratching against the concrete floor and knew there were rats here, scraping a thin film of nutrient from the dry packaged matter that surrounded them. Life was everywhere, inescapable, imperative. ~ Alexandra Kleeman

I'm a big 'American Idol' watcher, and sometimes I like to watch 'America's Got Talent.' Those are big, corny admissions, but sometimes it's so fun to see those kids really sing their hearts out. ~ Katey Sagal

The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the 'devil' only in order to drive the TV watcher to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US ... ~ Robin Cook

I'm a big people-watcher. I love it. But I feel bad about it, because I always get caught! ~ Seann William Scott

There was this philosopher-slash-historian called Foucault, who wrote about how society is like this legendary prison called panopticon. In the panopticon, you might be underconstant observation, except you can never be sure whether someone is watching or not, so you wind up following the rules anyway."
"But how do you know who's a watcher and who's a prisoner?" ...
"That's the point. Even the watchers are prisoners. ~ Robyn Schneider

Sam started to move away, and she pulled him closer.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"Shhh," he said. "I'm just going to grab the blanket and turn out the light. I'll be right back."
Bella chuckled sleepily and waved her right hand. The blanket lifted off the back of the chair where she'd left it and came slowly sailing across the room to drape itself over their entwined bodies. A snap of her fingers and the single lamp in the kitchen went out.
Sam blinked in the sudden darkness. "You're a very handy woman to have around," he said.
"You have no idea," she replied, and proceeded to demonstrate that she wasn't quite as tired as he'd thought. ~ Deborah Blake

I'm the 'Scandal'-'Nashville' kind of TV watcher. ~ Blake McIver Ewing

Son, if you were any farther from fine you'd be in Nebraska. ~ Deborah Blake

Love is this elusive bird," he said. "You're the lifelong bird-watcher, looking for this rare red-plumed quail people spend entire lives trying to see for three seconds in a cherry tree on a mountaintop in Japan."

"You're mistaking love for perfection," I said. "Real love when it's there? It's just there. It's a metal folding chair. ~ Marisha Pessl

I wanted to get out and walk eastward toward the park through the soft twilight, but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets ... I saw him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

He breathed in her hair, the sweet-smelling thickness of it. My father usually agreed with her requests, because stamped in his two-footed stance and jaw was the word Provider, and he loved her the way a bird-watcher's heart leaps when he hears the call of the roseate spoonbill, a fluffy pink wader, calling its lilting coo-coo from the mangroves. Check, says the bird-watcher. Sure, said my father, tapping a handful of mail against her back. ~ Aimee Bender

I've been recording forever. I'm a watcher. I'm a stalker. I love everything about people. It's always been a passion for me to observe. ~ Xavier Dolan

I have watched 'Project Runway,' but I'm not a devout watcher of it. But I think it's a great show, what I've seen of it, and I think Tim Gunn is a very positive, amazing guy. ~ Colleen Atwood

When angel meets Watcher, they're like two feral cats meeting each other in an alley. They raise their feathers, making their wings look spiky and larger than before. ~ Susan Ee

Shepherds buried the sun in the naked forest.
With a net of hair
A fisherman hauled the moon from the icy pond.

The pale man dwells
In a blue crystal, his cheek at rest against his stars,
Or he bows his head in crimson sleep.

But the black flight of birds always touches
The watcher, the holiness of blue flowers;
The nearby silence thinks forgotten things, extinguished angels.

Again the brow turns night in moonlit stone;
A radiant youth,
The sister appears in autumn and black putrefaction. ~ Georg Trakl

The Watchers were Sons of God, members of Elohim's divine council, or heavenly host. Two hundred of them rebelled and fell to earth during the ancient days of Jared. Led by the mightiest of the Watchers, Semjaza and Azazel, they had taken on new identities as gods of the Mesopotamian pantheon. They were referred to as gods, Watchers, or even Watcher gods. Semjaza had become Anu, the most high father god of the pantheon. Azazel had become his consort Inanna. Ishtar snorted in disgust at that memory. ~ Brian Godawa

You're a little bit of a show-off. First you get us out of hell. And then you defeat like the biggest, baddest Watcher on the books, and then you go on a high-speed, very high-altitude chase, and then you resuscitate the dead. Are you done? Because seriously, I don't know if I can take any more excitement. ~ Cynthia Hand

If I'm to die a mortal, why shouldn't the same fate be given to all, no matter how long they've lived or how important they think they are? All things must eventually come to an end. ~ Morgan Rhodes

I'm a world-class people watcher. I like to watch people's body movements, their expressions. It says so much about them. ~ Jill Scott

I'm not a big TV watcher guy; I like being outside. ~ Billy Magnussen

Life is like a river. Don't swim just float. Be a watcher. everything change except watcher. ~ AdOrAbLe MiNd

Oh, the symphonic shriek of a thousand hiding voices, the cry of the need inside, the entity, the silent watcher, the cold quiet thing, the one that laughs, the moondancer. The me that was not me, the thing that mocked and laughed and calling with its hunger. ~ Jeff Lindsay

Be the compassionate observer. No labels, just unconditional compassion. Fun times pass, tough times pass. Compassion will be eternal. ~ Matthew Donnelly

People look at me as if I were some sort of monster, but I can't think why. In my macabre pictures, I have either been a monster-maker or a monster-destroyer, but never a monster. Actually, I'm a gentle fellow. Never harmed a fly. I love animals, and when I'm in the country I'm a keen bird-watcher. ~ Peter Cushing

I'm an avid watcher of the Nat Geo channel, where I watch shows about how the planets are formed, and shows about moons, quasars, black holes. ~ Mekhi Phifer