No One Noticed Quotes & Sayings

Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it was somewhere else. No one seems to have noticed this fact. But grasping this firmly, one must pile experience upon experience. And once one has come to this understanding he will be a different person from that point on, though he may not always bare it in mind. When one understands this settling into single-mindedness well, his affairs will thin out. — Yamamoto Tsunetomo

She'd noticed before how middle-aged women were obsessed with the topic of age, always laughing about it, moaning about it, going on and on about it, as if the process of aging were a tricky puzzle they were trying to solve. Why were they so mystified by it? Jane's mother's friends seemed to literally have no other topic of conversation, or they didn't when they spoke to Jane. "Oh, you're so young and beautiful, Jane." (When she clearly wasn't; it was like they thought one followed the other: If you were young, you were automatically beautiful!) "Oh, you're so young, Jane, you'll be able to fix my phone/computer/camera." (When in fact a lot of her mother's friends were more technologically savvy than Jane.) "Oh, you're so young, Jane, you have so much energy." (When she was so tired, so very, very tired.) "And — Liane Moriarty

It was an excellent coat. It was long, grey, suspiciously blotched, smelt faintly of dust and old curries, went all the way down to my knees and overhung my wrists even when I stretched out my arms. It had big, smelly pockets, crunchy with crumbs, it boasted the remnants of a waterproof sheen, was missing a few buttons, and had once been beige. It was the coat that detectives down the ages had worn while trailing a beautiful, dangerous, presumably blond suspect in the rain, the coat that no one noticed, shapeless, bland and grey - it suited my purpose perfectly. — Kate Griffin

She scuttled back from his approach and held up a hand. "No!"
Eversley stilled, his eyes widening at the words. "I beg your pardon?"
He was going to smell her. "Don't come any closer!"
"Why not?"
"It's not appropriate."
"What isn't?"
"You. Being here. So near. While I am abed."
One black brow rose. "I assure you, my lady, I've no intention of debauching you."
She had no doubt of that, considering her current situation, but she couldn't well tell him the truth. "Nevertheless, I must insist on the utmost propriety."
"Who do you think nursemaided you for the last day?"
Bollocks. He was right. He'd been close. He'd had to have noticed her odor. But it didn't mean he had to any longer. She straightened her shoulders, ignoring the twinge in the left. "My reputation, you see."
He blinked. "You were shot on the Great North Road while wearing stolen livery - — Sarah MacLean

Literature is a source of pleasure, he said, it is one of the rare inexhaustible joys in life, but it's not only that. It must not be disassociated from reality. Everything is there. That is why I never use the word fiction. Every subtlety in life is material for a book. He insisted on the fact. Have you noticed, he'd say, that I'm talking about novels? Novels don't contain only exceptional situations, life or death choices, or major ordeals; there are also everyday difficulties, temptations, ordinary disappointments; and, in response, every human attitude, every type of behavior, from the finest to the most wretched. There are books where, as you read, you wonder: What would I have done? It's a question you have to ask yourself. Listen carefully: it is a way to learn to live. There are grown-ups who would say no, that literature is not life, that novels teach you nothing. They are wrong. Literature performs, instructs, it prepares you for life. — Laurence Cosse

He foll0wed her as she crossed to the four-station apparatus. His attention was glued to her butt the whole way. realizing what he was doing, he snapped his gaze away and checked to make sure no one had noticed.
Nope. They were all too busy staring at Jamie's butt. — Sarah Mayberry

If you'd just told me you wanted her for yourself, I wouldn't have opened my mouth. Asshole."
"He doesn't want me for himself," Melanie said. "He isn't looking for a relationship."
"It doesn't matter if he's looking," Richart grumbled. "He's found one. The two of you can't take your eyes off each other. And in the rare moments you do, you usually touch."
"What?" Bastien said the same time Melanie did.
Was she as appalled that her feelings were so transparent as he was?
"Don't worry." Richart drew out a handkerchief and wiped his crimson lips. "I doubt anyone else has noticed. Bastien is usually too busy pissing them all off."
"He doesn't piss you off?" Melanie asked.
"Other than just now" - Richart glared at Bastien - "no. I've spent enough time in his company that I've become immune to his bullshit. — Dianne Duvall

We all joke about Congress but we can't improve on them. Have you noticed that no matter who we elect, he is just as bad as the one he replaces? — Will Rogers

Middle children weep longer than their brothers and sisters. Over her mother's shoulder, stilling her pains and her injured pride, Jackie Lacon watched the party leave. First, two men she had not seen before: one tall, one short and dark. They drove off in a small green van. No one waved to them, she noticed, or even said goodbye. Next, her father left in his own car; lastly a blond, good-looking man and a short fat one in an enormous overcoat like a pony blanket made their way to a sports car parked under the beech trees. For a moment she really thought there must be something wrong with the fat one, he followed so slowly and so painfully. Then, seeing the handsome man hold the car door for him, he seemed to wake, and hurried forward with a lumpy skip. Unaccountably, this gesture upset her afresh. A storm of sorrow seized her and her mother could not console her. — John Le Carre

Had someone crept up to the cottage with the sunken thatched roof that night, had they peered through the slits in the shutters, they would have seen in the dimly lit interior a grey-bearded old man and an ashen-haired girl sitting by the fireplace. They would have noticed that the two of them were staring silently into the glowing, ruby coals. But no one could have seen it. For the cottage with the sunken, moss-grown thatched roof was well hidden among the fog and the mist, in a boundless swamp in the Pereplut Marshes where no one dared to venture. — Andrzej Sapkowski

To take so much punctuation in one hit initially sounds audacious, but perhaps the thief thought no one would notice as most readers never get that far into Ulysses - you will recall the theft of chapter sixty-two from Moby-Dick, where no one noticed? — Jasper Fforde

The Marine Corps assumes maximum ignorance from its enlisted folks. It assumes that no one taught you anything about physical fitness, personal hygiene, or personal finances. I took mandatory classes about balancing a checkbook, saving, and investing. When I came home from boot camp with my fifteen-hundred-dollar earnings deposited in a mediocre regional bank, a senior enlisted marine drove me to Navy Federal - a respected credit union - and had me open an account. When I caught strep throat and tried to tough it out, my commanding officer noticed and ordered me to the doctor. We — J.D. Vance

On the 25th March, at 14:57GMT, the world stopped for 27 minutes and 54 seconds. No-one noticed at first. Those that eventually did were ordered to keep quiet. — Anonymous

One of the things that I noticed in war was how difficult it was for our soldiers, at first, to realize that there are no rules to war. Our men were raised in sports, where a referee runs a football game, or an umpire a baseball game, and so forth. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Unfortunately, there is something of a flaw in this idealized picture of the way the scientific community discovers truth. And the flaw is that most scientific work never gets noticed. Study after study has shown that most scientific papers are read by almost no one, while a small number of papers are read by many people. — James Surowiecki

I do not think commodities are taken for granted. One of the convergences in time I noticed, and to me seemed very important, was the emergence of paper money. There had been permissionary notes, exchanging money by writing it, but there was no duplicated form of guaranteeing an exchange. — Marina Warner

If I am a fool then it is no misfortune, for then only one more fool will wander this Earth. Amongst the millions of mentally deranged it would barely be noticed. But what if I am not a fool, and that science itself has erred? Then the tragedy is incalculable! — Viktor Schauberger

I didn't think of myself as an outsider because of my race because ... where I grew up I was the same race as almost everyone else ... It is true that I noticed things that no one else seemed to notice. And I think only people who are outsiders do this. — Jamaica Kincaid

Patrick leans in for a hug through the open doorway, and in his arms I'm reminded of the other dream I had last night, which ... oh ... which I immediately stamp out of my mind, hoping that no one else noticed the temperature in the room shoot up about five hundred degrees. Could my subconscious be any more inappropriate? — Sarah Ockler

With a little ingenuity and vision, he had made it all but impossible for anyone in the squadron to talk to him, which was just fine with everyone, he noticed, since no one wanted to talk to him anyway. — Joseph Heller

The fact was that, as droves of demon kings had noticed, there was a limit to what you could do to a soul with, e.g., red-hot tweezers, because even fairly evil and corrupt souls were bright enough to realize that since they didn't have the concomitant body and nerve endings attached to them there was no real reason, other than force of habit, why they should suffer excruciating agony. So they didn't. Demons went on doing it anyway, because numb and mindless stupidity is part of what being a demon is all about, but since no one was suffering they didn't enjoy it much either and the whole thing was pointless. Centuries and centuries of pointlessness. — Terry Pratchett

The Council Leader nodded, but there was a thoughtful expression on his face. "Have you noticed that she saved a child?" he said slowly, cocking his head to the side. "This creation of Blaise's might not be as monstrous as you imagine." "What?" Augusta stared at him in disbelief. "No. That doesn't mean anything. One act of compassion - if that's what it was - does not eliminate the threat that this thing poses. You know that as well as I do. — Dima Zales

Everything was red, the air, the sun, whatever I looked at. Except for him. I fell in love with someone who was human. I watched him walk through the hills and come back in the evening when his work was through. I saw things no woman would see: that he knew how to cry, that he was alone. I cast myself at him, like a fool, but he didn't see me. And then one day he noticed I was beautiful and he wanted me. He broke me off and took me with him, in his hands, and I didn't care that I was dying until I actually was. — Alice Hoffman

One day I noticed that I could go on working my art motif no matter what the weather might be. I no longer needed the sun, for I took my light everywhere with me. — Georges Braque

It's so much easier to be ignored when no one's noticed you to begin with. — Talia Vance

Everyone I know lies, breaks their word, and has perfectly legitimate excuses for why they do. Except you. Haven't you ever noticed that? Two times in twelve years, you said you'd find this girl no matter what. And you did. Why? Because you gave your word, babe. And that might not mean shit to the rest of the world, but it means everything to you. Whatever else hapened today, you found her twice, Patrick. When no one else would even try. — Dennis Lehane

Though no one else noticed this, he thought his shadow on the ground was paler, lighter, than that of other people. — Haruki Murakami

No one noticed that I had changed- that I had given up sleep entirely, that I was spending all my time reading, that my mind was someplace a hundred years - and hundreds of miles - from reality. — Haruki Murakami

He looked around at the others ... They were all staring at their computers, or reading books or newspapers. Not one of them has noticed the weather. Maybe that's how the world was now ... Everyone was so wrapped up in his or her own little world that no one ever really saw anything anymore. — David Baldacci

No one else noticed, or cared. It was just something they did. Taking other people's livestock. Other people's lives. She watched the soldiers, hating them. They were different in so many ways, white and black, yellow and brown, skinny, short, tall, small, but they were all the same. Didn't matter if they wore finger-bone necklaces, or baby teeth on bracelets, or tattoos on their chests to ward off bullets. In the end, they were all mangled with battle scars and their eyes were all dead. — Paolo Bacigalupi

The city had defeated her, just like they said it would. Like some overcrowded party, no one had noticed her arrival, and would notice if she left. — David Nicholls

(Places are constantly changing, haven't you noticed the branches, the river?) No one notices those things, ... everyone walks around without seeing, they become accustomed, accustomed to their houses, their jobs, their loved ones, and in the end they convince themselves that this is their life, there can be no other, it's just a habit. — Andres Neuman

Dammit!" she said, stabbing the paper with her butter knife and then repeated "Dammit" a couple of more times in a hopeless decrescendo.
"KING CITY," said the paper.
"Yeah, yeah, so I've heard," she muttered. No one around her noticed. Teenagers shout things a lot while smashing knives near their hands, everyone knew. — Joseph Fink

In Germany, Dodd had noticed, no one ever abused a dog, and as a consequence dogs were never fearful around men and were always plump and obviously well tended. "Only horses seem to be equally happy, never children or the youth," he wrote ... He called it "horse happiness" and had noticed the same phenomenon in Nuremburg and Dresden. In part, he knew this happiness was fostered by German law, which forbade cruelty to animals and punished violators with prison.
"At a time when hundreds of men have been put to death without trial or any sort of evidence of guilt, and when the population literally trembles with fear, animals have rights guaranteed them which men and women cannot think of expecting."
He added, "One might easily wish he were a horse! — Erik Larson

On occasion I have observed parents shopping to clothe a son about to enter missionary service. The new suits are fitted, the new shoes are laced, and shirts, socks, and ties are bought in quantity. I met one father who said to me, 'Brother Monson, I want you to meet my son.' Pride popped his buttons; the cost of the clothing emptied his wallet; love filled his heart. Tears filled my eyes when I noticed that his [the father's] suit was old, his shoes well worn; but he felt no deprivation. The glow on his face was a memory to cherish. — Thomas S. Monson

You see, I am a very prosaic, unromantic, sensible sort of fellow myself; and I have always had my heart set on finding the most sensible, prudent, level-headed wife in the world. But, on the other hand, it is very important to me that she possess one very particular flaw: she must have no sense whatsoever where I myself am concerned. She would only have to take one look at me and - no matter what her steadiness of mind - she would lose it in the space of seconds ... Just lately, I have sometimes thought I may have found what I have always wanted. But just lately I have also noticed she has developed a most irritating habit of looking at the ground whenever we are together. Do you think she could try to overcome it? Well, Charlotte, are you going to look at me now? — Jane Austen

Seeing that humans in modern cultures were destroying their environment for the sake of self-indulgence, the Dokkalfar focused their attention on poorer nations, whose terrain still flourished. A century of ethnic cleansing, deforestation, and war assured the land weakened and humans stayed in abject poverty. The result was a perfect contrast. In certain parts of the world, millions of children died of starvation and disease while other countries held excesses and riches never before seen. Earth became a place of greedy extremes. Societies lost the ability to relate to one another, choosing instead to focus on their own. No one noticed the one common theme every culture held.
The world itself was dying. — Elizabeth Isaacs

Hutte, for instance, used to quote the case of a fellow he called "the beach man." This man had spent forty years of his life on beaches or by the sides of swimming pools, chatting pleasantly with summer visitors and rich idlers. He is to be seen, in his bathing costume, in the corners and backgrounds of thousands of holiday snaps, among groups of happy people, but no one knew his name and why he was there. And no one noticed when one day he vanished from the photographs. I did not dare tell Hutte, but I felt that "the beach man" was myself. Though it would not have surprised him if I had confessed it. Hutte was always saying that, in the end, we were all "beach men" and that "the sand" - I am quoting his own words - "keeps the traces of our footsteps only a few moments. — Patrick Modiano

No one noticed Witch Baby as she went back inside the cottage, into the room she and Cherokee shared.
Cherokee's side of the room was filled with feathers, crystals, butterfly wings, rocks, shells and dried flowers. there was a small tepee that Coyote had helped Cherokee make. The walls on Witch Baby's side of the room were covered with newspaper clippings - nuclear accidents, violence, poverty and disease. Every night, before she went to bed, Witch Baby cut out three articles or pictures with a pair of toenail scissors and taped them to the wall. they make Cherokee cry.
"Why do you want to have those up there?" Weetzie asked. "You'll both have nightmares. — Francesca Lia Block

I lost it in the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet, I started to panic when I noticed the graveyard of empty toilet paper rolls. The brown cylinders had ostensibly been placed vertically to form a half oval on top of the flat shiny surface of the stainless steel toilet paper holder. It was like some sort of miniature-recycled Stonehenge in the women's bathroom, a monument to the bowel movements of days past. Actually, it was sometime around 2:30 p.m. when my day exited the realm of country song bad and entered the neighboring territory of Aunt Ethel's annual Christmas letter bad. Last year Aunt Ethel wrote with steady, stalwart sincerity of Uncle Joe's gout and her one - no, make that two - car accidents, the new sinkhole in their backyard, their impending eviction from the trailer park, and Cousin Serena's divorce. To be fair, Cousin Serena got divorced every year, so that didn't really count toward the calamitous computation of yearly catastrophes. I — Penny Reid

I was a palm-wine drinkard since I was a boy of ten years of age. I had no other work more than to drink palm-wine in my life. - - - But when my father noticed that I could not do any work more than to drink, he engaged an expert palm-wine-tapster for me; he had no other work more than to tap palm-wine every day. So my father gave me a palm-tree farm which was nine miles square and it contained 560,000 palm-trees, and this palm-wine tapster was tapping one hundred and fifty kegs of palm-wine every morning, but before 2 o'clock p.m., I would have drunk it all; after that he would go and tap another 75 kegs. — Amos Tutuola

I think we reminded them of what peace was like, we boys of sixteen. We were registered with no draft board, we had taken no physical examinations. No one had ever tested us for hernia or color blindness. Trick knees and punctured eardrums were minor complaints and not yet disabilities which would separate a few from the fate of the rest. We were careless and wild, and I suppose we could be thought of as a sign of the life the war was being fought to preserve. Anyway, they were more indulgent toward us than at any other time; they snapped at the heels of seniors, driving and molding and arming them for the war. They noticed our games tolerantly. We reminded them of what peace was like, of lives which were not bound up with destruction. — John Knowles

Oh, no, I'm not saying she isn't a nut
she is
but I've noticed before that sometimes someone like that behaves quite ordinarily with everybody, manages everything, you'd never think she was a nut, but there's just one person, with that person, she's out of control. It makes you wonder,' said Alice. — Doris Lessing

One of my trips was to meet with the Gulf Cooperation Council with all the Saudi foreign ministers, and when we started the meeting I said 'Perhaps you've noticed that I'm not dressed the same as my predecessors, but no-one had a problem and I was never treated with anything other than respect ... So I did not have problems with that, interestingly enough. — Madeleine Albright

I don't know if you have noticed this, but it is quite possible for two human beings to have a conversation in which one or both parties involved has absolutely no idea what they're talking about. — Jeff Lindsay

But who's to say what's stupid and what's not stupid when your life falls apart? Some people fall apart over TV shows. Some people fall apart over a breakup. Some people fall apart over someone eating the last bowl of Apple Jacks. I fell apart because of the annual art show. No one noticed I was falling apart before then. I — A.S. King

I discovered is that I have a couple of valves that were leaky and had been giving, gave me a problem then. But I hadn't noticed anything up until then.A couple of incidents of shortness of breath and checked myself into a hospital, but that one in France really sat me down for a few minutes - a very few minutes, because seven days later I was in the studio, and eight days later, I was no the stage. — Al Jarreau

There was more she wanted to say. He could feel the words scrabbling at the clasps of her thoughts, eager to be known. Freed. But she stood there, stony- faced and impassive. And he remembered the girl he had glimpsed from the Grotto - the one who let her shoulders drop when no one looked, the one who fought every day when no one noticed. The one who had once hoped that the Night Bazaar traded on dreams. She deserved more than loneliness. — Roshani Chokshi

I don't know if anyone has noticed but I only ever write about one thing: being alone. The fear of being alone, the desire to not be alone, the attempts we make to find our person, to keep our person, to convince our person to not leave us alone, the joy of being with our person and thus no longer alone, the devastation of being left alone. The need to hear the words: You are not alone. — Shonda Rhimes

I stayed in the town until early
evening, and when the sun began to sink, my heart did too. This is your last chance to go
back, I told myself. Once it gets completely dark, you might never be able to leave here. I
went home on the same buses that had brought me there. I arrived before seven, and no one
noticed that I had run away. — Haruki Murakami

I stare into a thin, web-like crack above the urinal's handle and think to myself that if I were to disappear into that crack, say somehow miniaturize and slip into it, the odds are good that no one would notice I was gone. No ... one ... would ... care. In fact some, if they noticed my absence, might feel an odd, indefinable sense of relief. This is true: the world is better off with some people gone. Our lives are not all interconnected. That theory is crock. Some people truly do not need to be here. — Bret Easton Ellis

As you know, the International Poker Tour, by its own admission, knows very little about poker games, one of which ended tragically last week when an IPT-sanctioned tournament aboard a yacht in Australia accidentally used tarot cards instead of playing cards. That's right, it's true! Apparently no one noticed until someone laid down a full house and the dealer died. — Elle Lothlorien

I've noticed there are overnight camping trips that are reenactments of that arrival. In the promotional photos advertising the trip, entire families wear costumes and indeed pull a handcart over the granite rocks and creek beds of the nearby canyons and back country. The kids learns how very little actually can be brought in one of these carts
no television, for instance
and the parents learn a lot more than they bargain for, I expect; how shallow our own civilizing is, and the iron grip you have to keep on the instinct to wheedle and blame and shove, and how tender our feet will always be. — Liz Stephens

There's a startling fact that you read somewhere: after airbags became standard in cars, statisticians noticed that the incidence of severe leg injuries increased dramatically. Think about it for a minute: Why should that be? Is there something about the way airbags inflate during collision that targets the passengers' legs, makes them more vulnerable? No. It's a matter of checks and balances. Before airbags, there were certain accidents that would have killed you; you'd be a corpse in the morgue, and no one would be paying any attention to your legs. When we change the way we do things - the way we shop for groceries or take care of our children or protect ourselves from harm - we set other changes in motion, for good or for ill. And it may be years before we figure out what we've done. — Carolyn Parkhurst

I don't see any police cars."
"They probably had to park a couple blocks over. Anyway, as I was saying, I noticed illegal substances in the hands of a few guests."
"So?" she snapped. "It's a party."
"Alcohol is illegal under the age of twenty-one."
"Great!" Marcie shouted. "What am I going to do?" She paused, then raised her voice again. "You probably called them!"
"Who, me?" Vee said. "And lose the free food? No way. — Becca Fitzpatrick

And no one wants to be noticed because of something like that; it's like being an invasive species that no one pays any attention to until you've strangled and ruined all the beautiful native plants. The — Jasmine Warga

There is perhaps no harder truth for a parent to bear, but it is one that no parent on earth knows better than I do, and it is this: love is not enough. My love for Dylan, though infinite, did not keep Dylan safe, nor did it save the 13 people killed at Columbine High School, or the many others injured and traumatized. I missed the subtle signs of psychological deterioration that, had I noticed, might have made a difference for Dylan and his victims - all the difference in the world. — Sue Klebold

I am fascinated that no one I have read seems to have noticed that the literature on Picasso continually turns grown-up women into girls. — Siri Hustvedt

That said, the spaces between my features are in perfect proportion to each other. So far no one has noticed this. Also my ears: darling little shells. I wear my hair tucked behind them and try to enter crowded rooms ear-first, walking sideways. — Miranda July

Up again to the crest, and still no sight of land. Something that looked like clouds - or could it be ships? - far away on his left. Then, down, down, down - he thought he would never reach the end of it . . . this time he noticed how dim the light was. Such tepid revelry in water - such glorious bathing, as one would have called it on earth, suggested as its natural accompaniment a blazing sun. But here there was no such thing. The water gleamed, the sky burned with gold, but all was rich and dim, and his eyes fed upon it undazzled and unaching. The very names of green and gold, which he used perforce in describing the scene, are too harsh for the tenderness, the muted iridescence, of that warm, maternal, delicately gorgeous world. It was mild to look upon as evening, warm like summer noon, gentle and winning like early dawn. It was altogether pleasurable. He sighed. — C.S. Lewis

Au contraire, he's the person you wanted to be. One who was less arrogant, and undisciplined as a youth. One who was less like me. The Jean-Luc Picard you wanted to be, the one who did not fight the Nausicaan, had quite a different career from the one you remember. That Picard never had a brush with death, never came face to face with his own mortality, never realised how fragile life is or how important each moment must be. So his life never came into focus. He drifted for much of his career, with no plan or agenda, going from one assignment to the next, never seizing the opportunities that presented themselves. He never lead the away team on Milika Three to save the ambassador, or take charge of the Stargazer's Bridge when its Captain was killed. And no one ever offered him a command. He learned to play it safe. And he never, ever got noticed by anyone. — Q

People really could be one way outside, when inside they were torn to shreds, a fine white powder of grief and regret replacing blood and bones, and no one even noticed. — Alice Hoffman

She realized she was smiling so broadly and sincerely that it embarrassed her. But she couldn't make the smile go away. She was just glad no one could see inside her, because her heart suddenly felt so heavy,m only heavy in a good way. And then she noticed the knowing expression on Peter's face, and it seemed like maybe he WAS seeing inside her after all. She pushed his head away so that he couldn't look at her. — Tommy Wallach

No one seems to have noticed that a loss of a sense of shame means a loss of privacy; a loss of privacy means a loss of intimacy; and a loss of intimacy means a loss of depth. There is, in fact, no better way to produce shallow and superficial people than to let them live their lives entirely in the open, without concealment of anything. — Theodore Dalrymple

The Missouri of his childhood was theoretically the inspiration for Main Street, U.S.A., though only in its halcyon summer vacation months and stripped of any dismal memories: no blizzards, no doctor's office, and no school-house. Almost no one has a dismal experience in Walt Disney's America, as a matter of fact, at least not that Walt noticed. — Eve Zibart

I've noticed that just about every time I find a large program with known glitches that no one seems able to fix, that program is written in C and is likely written by a programming team in a remote location. — Jerry Pournelle

No one answers when I knock. But I left a cake and a card on the porch last night, and this morning when I was jogging I noticed that it was gone."
"That could mean anything. Maybe raccoons took it," I suggest and then want to do a forehead smack. Discovering vampires has really thrown a wrench in my concept of reality if my first theory is cake-stealing raccoons. — A.M. Robinson

As time went on, Sniff and Scurry continued their routine. They arrived early each morning and sniffed and scratched and scurried around Cheese Station C, inspecting the area to see if there had been any changes from the day before. Then they would sit down to nibble on the cheese. One morning they arrived at Cheese Station C and discovered there was no cheese. They weren't surprised. Since Sniff and Scurry had noticed the supply of cheese had been getting smaller every day, they were prepared for the inevitable and knew instinctively what to do. They looked at each other, removed the running shoes they had tied together and hung conveniently around their necks, put them on their feet and laced them up. The mice did not overanalyze things. To the mice, the problem and the answer were both simple. The situation at Cheese Station C had changed. So, Sniff and Scurry decided to change. They both looked out into the Maze. Then Sniff — Spencer Johnson

Each instant brought them, more momentous than the explosion of Krakatoa. It was only that no one noticed. We are to accustomed to the absurdity of existence. The loss of a universe is not worth taking seriously. — Yukio Mishima

DOCTOR AIN WAS recognized on the Omaha-Chicago flight. A biologist colleague from Pasadena came out of the toilet and saw Ain in an aisle seat. Five years before, this man had been jealous of Ain's huge grants. Now he nodded coldly and was surprised at the intensity of Ain's response. He almost turned back to speak, but he felt too tired; like nearly everyone, he was fighting the flu.

The stewardess handing out coats after they landed remembered Ain too: A tall thin nondescript man with rusty hair. He held up the line staring at her; since he already had his raincoat with him she decided it was some kooky kind of pass and waved him on.

She saw Ain shamble off into the airport smog, apparently alone. Despite the big Civil Defense signs, O'Hare was late getting underground. No one noticed the woman.

- 'The Last Flight of Doctor Ain — James Tiptree Jr.

He knew that people were staring at him. He looked different. Even different from other Erasers. He wasn't as - seamless. He didn't look as human as the rest of them did when they weren't morphed. He kind of looked morphy all the time. He hadn't seen his plain real face in - a long time.
"I know who you are."
Ari almost jumped - he hadn't noticed the boy slide onto the bench next to him.
He frowned down at the small, open face. "What?" he growled. This was when the little boy would get scared and probably turn and run. It always happened.
The boy smiled. "1 know who you are," he said, pointing at Ari happily.
Ari just snarled at him.
The boy wiggled with excitement. "You're Wolverine!"
Ari stared at him.
"You look awesome, dude," said the boy. "You're totally my favorite. You're the strongest one of all of them and the coolest too. I wish 1 was like you."
Ari almost gagged. No one had ever, ever said anything like that to him. — James Patterson

It was the first time they had ever talked face to face and Breece divined in a moment of dizzy revelation something about Sutter that no one had noticed before. Why, he is mad, Breece thought. He's not what people say about him at all. He's not just mean as a snake or eccentric or independent. He's as mad as a hatter, and I don't know how they've let him go so long. — William Gay

I was working with a Crookes tube covered by a shield of black cardboard. A piece of barium platino-cyanide paper lay on the bench there. I had been passing a current through the tube, and I noticed a peculiar black line across the paper ...
The effect was one which could only be produced in ordinary parlance by the passage of light. No light could come from the tube because the shield which covered it was impervious to any light known even that of the electric arc ...
I did not think I investigated ...
I assumed that the effect must have come from the tube since its character indicated that it could come from nowhere else ... It seemed at first a new kind of invisible light. It was clearly something new something unrecorded ...
There is much to do, and I am busy, very busy.
[Describing to a journalist the discovery of X-rays that he had made on 8 Nov 1895.] — Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen

A hundred years after his death, a statue of Lavoisier was erected in Paris and much admired until someone pointed out that it looked nothing like him. Under questioning the sculptor admitted that he had used the head of the mathematician and philosopher the Marquis de Condorcet - apparently he had a spare - in the hope that no one would notice or, having noticed, would care. In the second regard he was correct. The statue of Lavoisier-cum- Condorcet was allowed to remain in place for another half century until the Second World War when, one morning, it was taken away and melted down for scrap. — Bill Bryson

In better company, they found among all those hideous carcasses two skeletons, one of which held the other in its embrace. One of these skeletons, which was that of a woman, still had a few strips of a garment which had once been white, and around her neck was to be seen a string of adrezarach beads with a little silk bag ornamented with green glass, which was open and empty. These objects were of so little value that the executioner had probably not cared for them. The other, which held this one in a close embrace, was the skeleton of a man. It was noticed that his spinal column was crooked, his head seated on his shoulder blades, and that one leg was shorter than the other. Moreover, there was no fracture of the vertebrae at the nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had not been hanged. Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had come thither and had died there. When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he fell to dust. — Victor Hugo

It was more than childish perversity, of course, or the unexpected confidence she had recently acquired, that made her insist; she had indeed noticed that Gregor needed a lot of room to crawl about in, whereas the furniture, as far as anyone could see, was of no use to him at all. Girls of that age, though, do become enthusiastic about things and feel they must get their way whenever they can. Perhaps this was what tempted Grete to make Gregor's situation seem even more shocking than it was so that she could do even more for him. Grete would probably be the only one who would dare enter a room dominated by Gregor crawling about the bare walls by himself. So — Franz Kafka

Perhaps there is really nothing else when everything is falling to pieces, I think, except this bit of togetherness and even that is a sweet deception, for when someone else really needs you you cannot follow him or stand by him. I have noticed that often enough in the war when I looked into the face of a dead comrade. Each one of us has his own death and must suffer it alone; no one can help him then. — Erich Maria Remarque

In a recent experiment, men were asked to rank how attractive they found photographs of different women's faces. The photos were eight by ten inches, and showed women facing the camera or turned in three-quarter profile. Unbeknownst to the men, in half the photos the eyes of the women were dilated, and in the other half they were not. The men were consistently more attracted to the women with dilated eyes. Remarkably, the men had no insight into their decision making. None of them said, "I noticed her pupils were two millimeters larger in this photo than in this other one." Instead, they simply felt more drawn toward some women than others, for reasons they couldn't quite put a finger on. — David Eagleman

Darwin's theory shows the truth of naturalism: we are animals like any other; our fate and that of the rest of life on Earth are the same. Yet, in an irony all the more exquisite because no one has noticed it, Darwinism is now the central prop of the humanist faith that we can transcend our animal natures and rule the Eart. — John Gray

When we were growing up, all of us kids were vegetarians. No one had asked me to stop eating meat - I just noticed everyone else around me had stopped, so I followed the crew. — Janet Jackson

As Shadow passed it he noticed that the newsreader was grinning and winking at him. When he was sure that no one was looking in his direction he gave the set the finger. — Neil Gaiman

But as I have noticed on more than one occaision, life itself is unfair, and there is no complaint department, so we might as well accept things the way they happen, clean up the mess, and move on. — Jeff Lindsay

At eighteen I thought I knew everything, then at thirty, I realized that I knew nothing--and possibly never would, which depressed me until I noticed that no one else knew anything either. — Shirley Conran

From a broader money view perspective, however, September 2008 was the moment when the Fed moved from lender of last resort to dealer of last resort, in effect taking the collapsing wholesale money market onto its own balance sheet. But in the heat of the moment, no one noticed. — Perry G. Mehrling

Her armpits were still slightly wet & she examined them one by one. No hair. This was one of her greatest assets over her sister who had underarm hair.Her slender arms & long legs were also free of hair. She had only a little bit of pubic hair, she noticed. It must be terrible to have lots of ugly underarm & thick coarse arm & leg hairs that you had to shave off daily, she thought. A bit more pubic hair, she wouldn't mind, she decided. But they tended to tickle men's nostrils & make them sneeze.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

When I was nine, I was singing western swing: Roy Rogers and Patsy Cline. It got me noticed because no one my age was doing it, but it made me feel inferior because none of my friends could relate to it. — Kacey Musgraves

No one sees your strength, do they? No one sees the silent battle you fight against your overprotective mind that's trying to keep you safe from harm by keeping you safe from risk, safe from connection, safe from honesty. Maybe others don't see, but you see it sometimes, don't you? In the mirror, in those eyes, begging for someone to notice. You have noticed. It is real. You are strong. You are fighting for something incredible. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise - especially not your thoughts. — Vironika Tugaleva

There was not an inch of solid ground anywhere in the world for me to call my own. I didn't belong anywhere. Had I disappeared, no one would have noticed. — Leigh Hershkovich

You are well aware that it is not numbers or strength that bring the victories in war. No, it is when one side goes against the enemy with the gods' gift of a stronger morale that their adversaries, as a rule, cannot withstand them. I have noticed this point too, my friends, that in soldiering the people whose one aim is to keep alive usually find a wretched and dishonorable death, while the people who, realizing that death is the common lot of all men, make it their endeavour to die with honour, somehow seem more often to reach old age and to have a happier life when they are alive. These are facts which you too should realize (our situation demands it) and should show that you yourselves are brave men and should call on the rest to do likewise. — Xenophon

Actually, I can't take credit for any of my decisions. I noticed one day that all my decisions were making themselves, and always at the right time. I haven't had to make one decision since then. They are always made for me, and they come from the wisdom that is in us all. I trust that wisdom completely. That trust itself was a decision made for me as inquiry cleared my mind. No decision, no fear. — Byron Katie

Cal was dressed in a Hex Hall uniform. The blazer was a little tight on his broad shoulders, more so when he shrugged. "It was mine.Mrs. Casnoff brought it with her. I don't really, uh, do costumes. Figured this was a good compromise."
I'd thought no one but Archer could make that uniform look good, but Cal proved me wrong. The bright blue was nice against his tan skin and golden hair, and he looked younger. There was a dimple in his cheek as he smiled at me-something I'd never noticed before. "You make a good Hecate," he said.
I would have snorted and made a sarcastic comment, but there was something in his eyes that made me just say, "Thanks. — Rachel Hawkins

Have you noticed how dogs sniff at one another when they meet? It seems to be their nature.
- Yes; it's a funny habit.
- No, it's not funny; you are wrong there. There's nothing funny in nature, however funny it may seem to man. If dogs could reason and criticize us they'd be sure to find just as much that would be funny to them, if not far more, in the social relations of men, their masters -far more, I think. I am more convinced that there is far more foolishness among us. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Teenage girls, please don't worry about being super popular in high school, or being the best actress in high school, or the best athlete. Not only do people not care about any of that the second you graduate, but when you get older, if you reference your successes in high school too much, it actually makes you look kind of pitiful, like some babbling old Tennessee Williams character with nothing else going on in her current life. What I've noticed is that almost no one who was a big star in high school is also big star later in life. For us overlooked kids, it's so wonderfully fair. — Mindy Kaling

Pounce had it easier than any of us. No one noticed a black cat in the street. He stopped here and there to sniff aught of interest. Wherever our Rat stopped, Pounce was there, close enough to see up the Rat's nose. I was so proud. Now there was a proper god, making himself useful!
Since my thought might be deemed blasphemy, I said silent prayers to the Goddess and to Mithros. I begged forgiveness and asked them not to misunderstand. Since I wasn't blasted where I stood, I guess they forgave me, or they hadn't heard my blasphemy. — Tamora Pierce

Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front of the painting and cried. No one had noticed; she wore dark green bubble shades. For a moment she'd wondered if the seal around her sockets were tight enough to allow the tears simply to go on and fill up the entire lens space and never dry. She could carry the sadness of the moment with her that way forever, see the world refracted through those tears, those specific tears, as if indices as yet unfound varied in important ways from cry to cry. — Thomas Pynchon

It's not about you it's about human behavior. You know how there will be a report on TV of some woman who kills herself and her kids, and everyone acts like that's so shocking"
I nod "I guess so"
"What's shocking," Cheryl says, "is that it doesn't happen more often. What's shocking is that everyone says they fell in love with their child the minute it was born, what's shocking is that no one is honest about how hard it all is. So-am I surprised that some lady drowns her children and shoots herself? No. I think it's sad; I wish people had noticed that she was struggling, I wish she could have asked for help. What shocks me is how alone we all are — A.M. Homes

Three days after that, the funeral was held, and while riding from the church to the cemetery Ava looked out the widow and noticed that everyone she passed was crying.
"Old people, college students, even the colored men at the gas station
the soul brothers, or whatever we're supposed to call them now."
It was such an outdated term, I just had to use it myself.
"How did the soul brothers know your father?"
"That's just it," she said. "No one told us until after the burial that Kennedy had been shot. It happened when we were in the church, so that's what everyone was so upset about. The president, not my father. — David Sedaris

Reacher got to them on the plane. He put them out of action and stole their wallets." "On the plane?" "He broke Lozano's fingers and Baldacci's arms and no one noticed." "That's not possible." "Apparently it is. One against two, on an airplane, with a hundred witnesses. It's a blatant humiliation. And now he's renting cars on our dime? Who does this guy think he is? — Lee Child

The sun and the moon went out and no one fu****g noticed! — Kendare Blake

I mean, the ones on trial are not like me in any way: they're a different kind of human being. They live in a different world, they think different thoughts, and their actions are nothing like mine. Between the world they live in and the world I live in there's this thick, high wall. At least, that's how I saw it at first ... I became a lot less sure of myself. In other words, I started seeing it like this: that there really was no such thing as a wall separating their world from mine. Or if there was such a wall, it was probably a flimsy one made of papier-mache. The second I leaned on it, I'd probably fall right through and end up on the other side. Or maybe it's that the other side has already managed to sneak its way inside of us, and we just haven't noticed. — Haruki Murakami