Attention Quotes
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An air of anticipation hung over the lab. The pied crow—whose name, according to Tasha, was Pitch, and who had been raised in captivity, bouncing from wildlife center to wildlife center before winding up living in my sister’s private aviary—gripped her perch stubbornly with her talons and averted her eyes from the screen, refusing to react to the avatar that was trying to catch her attention. She’d been ignoring the screen for over an hour, shutting out four researchers and a bored linguist who was convinced that I was in the middle of some sort of creative breakdown.
Elizabeth Bear
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If you aren't just a little depressed, then you aren't paying very much attention to what's going on in the world.
Pete Wentz
Fall Out Boy
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Now all persons who have spent much of their time in Germany, and certainly all born Germans, have a great fear of the law. Their one idea is not to attract its attention, to be inconspicuous, to crawl in time, as it were, under tables. Accordingly, when I saw myself within reach of its clutches, even though it was English law and presumably more mild, I began to tremble, while the children, being born Germans, trembled harder, and Elsa the maid, not only born German but of the class which can least easily defend itself, trembled hardest of anybody.
Elizabeth von Arnim
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In the long term, the fragmentation of attention, a breaking up of focus and mental continuity, can disrupt neural connections in the brain and eventually lead to a literally ‘shallower’ neurological structure. It makes us – on the physiological level of the brain, as well as of the mind – less capable of concentration and continuous thought.
Eva Hoffman
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Tragedy is that our attention centers on what people are not, rather than on what they are and who they might become.
Brennan Manning
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Most people out there are just trying to keep their job and provide for their family. If climate change is now a once-in-a-mortgage problem, and if food prices start to spike, people will pay attention.
David Titley
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Experiences is just paying attention as time passes.
Erin McKean
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As long as you're around, your life is too. So just as you shower love and affection and attention on the husbands, wives, parents, children and forever friends who sorround you, you have to do so equally with your life, because it's yours, it's you, and it's always there rooting for you, cheering you on, even when you feel like you can't do it. I gave up on my life for a while, but what I've learned is that even when that happens and especially when that happens, life never gives up on you.
Cecelia Ahern
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I'm lucky to have had a father John Lennon who paid attention.
Sean Lennon
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Apple has some tremendous assets, but I believe without some attention, the company could, could, could - I'm searching for the right word - could, could die.
Steve Jobs
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Technique to me is a kind of a ... I'm reluctant to talk about it because it seems so obvious to me what good technique is. I mean, you sit down, you shut up, and you pay attention is basically the good technique. And then the footnotes add; on an empty stomach, in a dark room, feeling comfortable.
Terence McKenna
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Paying attention to the present moment without letting your thoughts and ideas about the past and the future get in the way is essential. Why? Because it makes room for the views of others. It allows us to begin to trust them—and, more important, to hear them. It makes us willing to experiment, and it makes it safe to try something that may fail. It encourages us to work on our awareness, trying to set up our own feedback loop in which paying attention improves our ability to pay attention. It requires us to understand that to advance creatively, we must let go of something. As the composer Philip Glass once said, “The real issue is not how do you find your voice, but … getting rid of the damn thing.
Edwin Catmull
