Selected attention quotes

1. I can't play bridge. I don't play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn't seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

2. I realized that anything to do with Fermat's Last Theorem generates too much interest.

3. Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.

4. I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.

5. I want to reach your mind - where is it currently located?

6. Spring is noticed, if at all By people sitting in railway trains.

7. One of the points about distractions is that everything that they do is destabilizing.

8. Well, they didn't lack for topics after Hiroshima. Why should 9/11 slow them down? I know it got a lot of press, but it's just a few large buildings and aircraft, it's not like D-Day and the Seige of Berlin.

9. Sometimes when you look in his eyes you get the feeling that someone else is driving.

10. A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.

11. Should a person on returning from the city discover his house to be in flames, let him examine well the change which he has received from the chair-carrier before it is too late; for evil never travels alone.

12. Evil is whatever distracts.

13. I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.

14. Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.

15. We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.

16. Poetry operates by raising our curiosity, engaging the mind by degrees to take an interest in the event, keeping that event suspended, and surprising at last with an unexpected catastrophe. The painter's art is more confined, and has nothing that corresponds with, or perhaps is equivalent to, this power and advantage of leading the mind on, till attention is totally engaged. What is done by Painting, must be done at one blow; curiosity has received at once all the satisfaction it can ever have.

17. A good listener is usually thinking about something else.

18. The only way to entertain some folks is to listen to them.

19. I think cheesecake helps call attention to you. Then you can follow through and prove yourself.

20. Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive.

21. I'm always amazed at anyone's interest in what I have to say.

22. Fifty percent of people want to sleep with me, and the other 50 percent want to kill me.

23. Don't pay any attention to the critics - don't even ignore them.

24. I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them.

25. Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

26. The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.

27. We aren't in an information age, we are in an entertainment age.

28. The trouble with most Englishwomen is that they will dress as if they had been a mouse in a previous incarnation... they do not want to attract attention.

29. Now we have hands-free phones, so you can focus on the thing you're really supposed to be doing ... chances are, if you need both of your hands to do something, your brain should be in on it too.

30. We usually see only the things we are looking for - so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.

31. You know you're really famous when there's rumors about you being gay.

32. Presence is more than just being there.

33. An actor's a guy, who if you ain't talking about him, ain't listening.

34. You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.

35. I ne'er could any luster see In eyes that would not look on me.

36. It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.

37. School children and students who love God should never say: 'For my part I like mathematics'; 'I like French'; 'I like Greek.' They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.

38. Everyone has a photographic memory, some just don't have film.

39. 'Husbands are like fires - they go out when unattended.'

40. From the evening breeze to this hand on my shoulder, everything has its truth. Consciousness illuminates it by paying attention to it.

41. I rarely believe anything, because at the time of believing I am not really there to believe. ~ Ch. 3

42. ...the point of public relations slogans like 'Support Our Troops' is that they don't mean anything [...] that's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody is gonna be against and I suppose everybody will be for, because nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. But its crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something, do you support our policy? And that's the one you're not allowed to talk about.

43. (third time Eddie tries) Eddie Guerrero! (in La Bamba song)

44. You stand now, before The Rock, looking at The Rock, gawking at The Rock, wanting to go one-on-one with 'The Great One?' And now, in front of all The Rock's fans, you want to serve The Rock a great, big piece of that poontang pie?

45. This ain't 'Sing Along With The Rock'!

46. He holds him with his glittering eye - The Wedding-Guest stood still, And listens like a three years child: The Mariner hath his will.

47. All right, kids. Up to this point, I've been okay with you drifting away, going into the kitchen, getting a beverage or maybe some reference books to look up all the ingredients today. But at this point on, you have got to stay RIGHT THERE. Let's get back to the action!

48. There is nothing so interesting on stage than a man trying to get a knot out of his shoelaces.

49. I shake my tits a lot. If you don't want to listen, you can just watch.

50. Armed with his prime number tables, Gauss began his quest. As he looked at the proportion of numbers that were prime, he found that when he counted higher and higher a pattern started to emerge. Despite the randomness of these numbers, a stunning regularity seemed to be looming out of the mist.

51. At least they're trying to get rid of AIDS. Some diseases they just gave up on. Some diseases, if you get them, you're on your own. They ain't going to have no telethon for you. R Kelly ain't singing no song. You just got this shit.

52. Poetry is an art form that demands heightened attention and retention. It both invites and rewards more intense involvement than we normally give to other kinds of speech. Poetic technique, therefore, is never esoteric but eminently practical. It serves at least two purposes. First, it announces that a poem differs from other kinds of speech, that it requires the audience's special attention. A poem begins by attracting our attention through its sound, shape, typography, syntax, texture, or tone. Second, the technique maintains the audience's involvement. All poetic form is a way of keeping the audience's attention beyond what ordinary language requires. Meter, for example, creates a gentle trance state in the auditor. Since poetry is more intense, condensed, and expressive than ordinary language, it needs these techniques to carry the burden of its message.

53. Letterman, during the next show's monologue: 'Do you know what I've realized? I think Madonna likes to shock people.'

54. Look at you just looking at the Rock, gawking at the Rock; you ought to be ashamed of yourself, a woman your age looking at the Rock like this!'

55. To have no food for our heads no food for our hearts, no food for our activity, is that nothing? If we have no food for the body, how do we cry out, how all the world hears of it, how all the newspapers talk of it, with a paragraph headed in great capital letters, DEATH FROM STARVATION! But suppose one were to put a paragraph in the Times, Death of Thought from Starvation, or Death of Moral Activity from Starvation, how people would stare, how they would laugh and wonder! One would think we had no heads nor hearts, by the total indifference of the public towards them. Our bodies are the only things of any consequence.

56. He is interested in the feelings of the squash ball, and of the champagne bottle that launches the ship. In a football match his sympathy is not with either of the teams but with the ball, or, in a match ending nil-nil, with the hunger of the goalmouth.

57. Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother's holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed... and this being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.

58. Journalism largely consists in saying 'Lord Jones Dead' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.

59. Careful! We don't want anybody getting squished.

60. The flattering, if arbitrary, label, First Lady of the Theatre, takes its toll. The demands are great, not only in energy but eventually in dramatic focus. It is difficult, if not impossible, for a star to occupy an inch of space without bursting seams, cramping everyone else's style and unbalancing a play. No matter how self-effacing a famous player may be, he makes an entrance as a casual neighbor and the audience interest shifts to the house next door.

61. Uncomprehending when they have heard, they are like the deaf. The saying describes them: though present they are absent.

62. 'Even when I go see one of my favorite bands, I start to get bored/tired/over it after an hour and a half. If they said, 'Guess what! We'll be playing for 2 hours tonight!', you'd see a Jade-shaped hole in the front door.'

63. 'I hit on your girlfriend, I hit on Davey's wife, I gave your grandpa a sponge bath, I'm down for whatever!'

64. Interviewer: 'Hey Jade, are the rest of the guys jealous that the entire 'Girl's Not Grey' video occurs in your crotch?'

65. Growing up I was always the blonde that everybody made fun of, and I just played into that, because that was how I got the guys. That's how I charmed people.

66. Have you watched your thinking? I watched that car go by, it was a blue car. Can I watch my thought in the same way, as it moves from one thing to another? And if it does, find out if it can end; instead of it being a long thread, break it, see what happens. Can you break a thought and say, 'Well, that's enough, enough is enough' and just end that thought and see what happens before the next thought is waiting. Before it springs on you, watch it. In that space, in that interval, what happens? (Brockwood, 1975)

67. Joe Bob says check it out.

68. People like Mike Read and DLT would often complain that they couldn't go anywhere without being recognized, but of course would go everywhere in a tartan suit carrying a guitar, so they would have attracted attention in a lunatic asylum. In the streets of London, people would go, 'Who the fuck is that? Isn't that that Mike Read bloke?'

69. One of the highpoints of my weekend in Berlin was the Atonal-Festival, and we weren't there for very long, it was just a lot of people shrieking really, banging instruments in a rather random fashion... But a young woman there did seem to show some kind of vague sexual interest in me, and like twenty years ago I should've been most gratified by this and probably tried to do something about it. But of course when you've deteriorated to the point that I've deteriorated to, you become a little uneasy. And I wondered, like, is she a dedicated sociologist who is prepared to stop at nothing to support some half-baked theory she has, or is she smashed out of her head, or is she just plain mad. And I rather suspect that she was smashed out of her head, because trying to get off with me is roughly equivalent to eating all of your meals out of wastebins.

70. For when we are interested in the beauty of a thing, the oftener we can see it the better; but when we are interested only by the story of a thing, we get tired of hearing the same tale told over and over again, and stopping always at the same point - we want a new story presently, a newer and better one - and the picture of the day, and novel of the day, become as ephemeral as the coiffure or the bonnet of the day. Now this spirit is wholly adverse to the existence of any lovely art. If you mean to throw it aside to-morrow, you can never have it to-day.

71. Faith! he must make his stories shorter or change his comrades once a quarter.

72. We hang on to every line, And walk straight down the middle of it.

73. Your name is being called by sacred things That are not addressed nor listened to. Sometimes they blow trumpets.

74. Whatever he does, he must do in a more decided and daring manner than any one else; he lounges with extravagance, and yawns so as to alarm the reader!

75. I pretend to listen:.what more does she want?

76. One tabloid had an article about how I was an irresistible sex- and man-magnet and how men flock to me. Of course, they were absolutely correct...

77. Man In Front of Castle: 'Hey Abbot!'

78. 'Africa Deserves a Closer Look,' The World and I, February 1997, by Michael Johns.

79. Where there's no stop and go a thought may wet your face, a breath arreat your stare.

80. His accent made him exotic and interesting; his broken arm made him a martyr; his sadism made him a natural focus for all those who loved pain in others.

81. [Her] every movement betrayed the fact that she thought she was even uglier than in fact she was. Her shoulders slumped and she seemed to shrink as she walked, as if she hoped that if she became very unobtrusive enough she would entirely disappear. Of course her very ungainliness served only to call more attention to her, but I have learned that human adolescents never understand that the best way to avoid notice is to behave normally.

82. He has the attention span of a bolt of lightning.

83. On the street. I was talking to you and you found something better to do. ~ 'Carlos (Don't Let It Go To Your Head)

84. And the eyes of the world are watching now.

85. Chelsea... Chelsea... Your Foot!

86. It was W. C. Fields who hated to appear in the same scene with a child, a dog, or a plunging neckline - because nobody in the audience would be looking at him. Jennifer Aniston has the same problem in this movie even when she's in scenes all by herself.

87. Artists encounter the landscape they propose to paint-they look at it, observe it from this angle and that. They are, as we say, absorbed in it. Or, in the case of abstract painters, the encounter may be with an idea, an inner vision, that in turn may be led off by the brilliant colors on the palette or the inviting rough whiteness of the canvas.

88. Faith is rather like a rhinoceros, in fact: it won't do much in the way of real work for you, and yet at close quarters it will make spectacular claims upon your attention.[2]

89. In order to obtain the optimum view of what takes place in front of me, I should have to lower my eyes a little. But I lower my eyes no more. In a word, I only see what appears close beside me, what I best see I see ill.

90. Writers, poets, painters, musicians, philosophers, political thinkers, to name only a few of the categories affected, must woo their readers, viewers, listeners, from distraction. To this we must add, for simple realism demands it, that these same writers, painters, etc., are themselves the children of distraction. As such, they are peculiarly qualified to approach the distracted multitudes. They will have experienced the seductions as well as the destructiveness of the forces we have been considering here. This is the destructive element in which we do not need to be summoned to immerse ourselves, for we were born to it.

91. Dear God, she was beautiful. Sharon was more beautiful as a teenager than she was in her twenties; in Europe people would turn around on the street just to look at her.

92. Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object; it means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired which we are forced to make use of.

93. Have you summoned your wits from wool-gathering?

94. Some people spend their time just runnin' round in circles Always chasing some exotic bird I prefer to spend some time just listening for that special something That I've never ever heard I like a new song to sing, another show or somewhere entirely different to be But baby you make me feel so free.

95. When a reviewer says that Malamud is second only to Bellow, it means he really isn't thinking about either of them. When he's reading Malamud he's thinking about Bellow, and when he's reading Bellow he's thinking about Roth. This is the essence of the ratings game: distraction. Children play it all the time. 'Is this the biggest bridge in the world?' 'No, it's the third biggest.' 'Oh.' They lose all interest in the bridge.

96. 'The Great Figure' from Sour Grapes (1921)

97. 'So many things compete for our attention and action as we address what must be done to take the Fijian race forward.'

98. 'I object to background music no matter how good it is. Composers want people to listen to their music, they don't want them doing something else while their music is on. I'd like to get the guy who sold all those big businessmen the idea of putting music in the elevators, for he was really clever. What on earth good does it do anybody to hear those four or eight bars while going up a few flights.' Quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ISBN 0028645812

99. In the mazes of loitering people, the watchful and furtive, The shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves, In the drowse of the sunlight, among the low voices, I suddenly face you

100. His simplicity was his power. He knew nature as no one else did... His affection for the commonplace little pine-needle was as genuine as that for the most beautiful flower or the grandest tree, and the little flakes of snow and the little crumbs of granite were each to him real life, and each has a personality worthy of his wonderful mind's attention; and he talked and wrote of them as he did of the ouzel or the Douglas squirrel- made real persons of them, and they talked and lived with him and were a part of his life as is our own flesh and blood. One cannot describe Mount Rainier, one cannot describe the Grand Canyon, one cannot describe his beloved Yosemite; humanity is silent in their presence. So it was with John Muir to all who knew him; so has his influence affected mankind, and so will his life and work impress generations to come. This most wonderful of men, lifted above death and time by his human sympathy no less than by his genius, will forever influence the world, and it will be the better for his example and his inspiration.