#Detail Quotes

“A sure sign of an amateur is too much detail to compensate for too little life.”

“For what but eye and ear silence the mindWith the minute particulars of mankind?”

“Let us not take for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.”

“Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.”

“The thing about Proust is his combination of the utmost sensibility with the utmost tenacity. He searches out these butterfly shades to the last grain. He is as tough as catgut and as evanescent as a butterfly's bloom.”

“We've got to make the small things unforgettable.”

“There is a tiny yellow daffodil, The butterfly can see it from afar, Although one summer evening's dew could fill Its little cup twice over, ere the star Had called the lazy shepherd to his fold, And be no prodigal.”

“One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite - that particular peach is but a detail.”

“Have you noticed that bones are always modeled and not carved, that you always have the impression they come from a mold, that they were first modeled in clay? Any bone you look at, you always find fingerprints on it.”

“The sugar maple is remarkable for its clean ankle. The groves of these trees looked like vast forest sheds, their branches stopping short at a uniform height, four or five feet from the ground, like eaves, as if they had been trimmed by art, so that you could look under and through the whole grove with its leafy canopy, as under a tent whose curtain is raised.”

“I see in many places little barberry bushes just come up densely in the cow-dung, like young apple trees, the berries having been eaten by the cows. Here they find manure and an open space for the first year at least, when they are not choked by grass or weeds. In this way, evidently, many of these clumps of barberries are commenced.”

“The language of the poem is the language of particulars.”

“Seeing the small is called clarity.”

“The little things in life are as interesting as the big ones.”

“Precisely the least, the softest, lightest, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a flash, a moment - a little makes the way of the best happiness.”

“In the successful organization, no detail is too small to escape close attention.”

“Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.”

“The smallest hair throws its shadow.[Ger., Das kleinste Harr wirft seinen Schatten.]”

“It is not enough for a story to flow. It has to kind of trickle and glint as it crosses over the stones of the bare facts.”

“Look closely. The beautiful may be small.”

“Remember to get the weather in your damn book-weather is very important.”

“The secret of a successful restaurant is sharp knives.”

“There is nothing more visible than what is secret, and nothing more manifest than what is minute.”

“A town, a landscape are when seen from afar a town and a landscape; but as one gets nearer, there are houses, trees, tiles leaves, grasses, ants, legs of ants and so on to infinity. All this is subsumed under the name of landscape.”

“The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression - all of that is very important.”