Quotes About Attention

These days, you have to have a gimmick to do the weather. You have to have an act.

My weave fell off. I was running in PE, and it got caught in a tree. People were looking at me funny.

Social media has made the web all about me, me, me.

A variety of list builders, universities and non-governmental orgainsations are focussing attention on the accuracy and reliability of information on Web sites.

Because it's so easy to medicate our need for self-worth by pandering to win followers, 'likes' and view counts, social media have become the metier of choice for many people who might otherwise channel that energy into books, music or art - or even into their own Web ventures.

There is an overwhelming amount of information available to us all on the web each day, not to mention what is shared with us by our family, friends, fans, and followers. This necessitates the need to filter through all that information and to decide for ourselves where to put our attention.

To be clear, I worry as much about the impact of the Internet as anyone else. I worry about shortening attention spans, the physical cost of sedentary 'surfing' and the potential for coarsening discourse as millions of web pages compete for attention by appealing to our base instincts.

The Web is going to capture an increasing share of people's attention, and billions of dollars are going to flow in. What Web 2.0 is about is harnessing those dollars in highly leverageable ways.

I'm transitioning to television and film, but ultimately, I want to have a stronger presence on the web and be able to curate the content that I want to see. To bring attention to other filmmakers and writers.

For anyone who devours the web on a daily basis, the biggest problem is too much of a good thing. There's so much extraordinary content - from articles to images, videos and Tweets - that it's almost impossible to keep track of it.

Human attention is limited, and a massive number of newly browsable books from the long tail necessarily compete with the biggest best-sellers, just as cable siphons audience from the major networks, and just as the Web pulls viewers from TV.

The Web critic relies on his or her readers for attentiveness and approval.

There's no question that looking down to search the Web, send a text message, or log onto Facebook puts you in danger and puts people around you on the road in danger.

I love the web, but man, I look at my browser, and there are, like, twenty tabs up there, all jostling for space and time, all framed by a mosaic of other apps, other work, other entertainment... so even when I really am paying attention to something on the web, there's this peripheral haze.

I don't really care if people don't like me. The only thing I care about is if they are reading my website.

The devices that our kids use are shipped from the factory with every possible audio, visual or vibration alert switched on. Each new app, website, tweet and message adds another layer of intrusion - each intrusion is cynically designed to get a response, and each response creates an appetite for another intrusion.

The effort of every time I put out a video, it was like, 'Okay, I've got to put it on my Facebook, I've got to put it on my website, what's the view count now? What's the view count now? What's the view count now?' You get obsessive with it.

I used to go on all these blogs and all these websites which I really don't like to go and read about at all, and I couldn't care less anymore.

There are loads of websites devoted to me.

PR and marketing doesn't sell books. It gets attention for them. It sends readers to bookstores and websites to read a few pages.

To tell you the truth, there are all these websites predicting my early death, and it's starting to work on me!

So many little girls dream about their wedding day. But with actresses, sometimes it's the inverse, because we get to be the centre of attention, looked up and down, dressed up for premieres all the time. The pull isn't quite as great.

I can see why people love the idea of a big white wedding - it is a day when they are the centre of attention and get to wear a beautiful dress. But that sounds awful to me because that is like getting ready to walk down the red carpet.

Now that I think about it, my 40th birthday was the most anxiety I've ever had, and my wedding was also the second time I've had that much anxiety. So I'm starting to realize that I can't be throwing these big bash parties because I need to own that I get anxiety with a lot of people diverting their attention to me.