Quotes About Attention

Names have power. This is the fundamental principle of magic everywhere. Call out the name of a supernatural being, and you will have its instant and undivided attention in the same way that your lost toddler will have yours the second it calls your name.

This goes in the Turd cutter

I would rather do nothing than do a rough sketch without having looked at anything. My memories will do better.

My good friends, while I do most earnestly recommend you to take care of your health and safety, as things most precious to us, I would not have that care degenerate into an effeminate and over-curious attention, which is always disgraceful to a man's self, and often troublesome to others.

Certainly, I want to capture the reader's attention from the beginning and hold it until the end: that is half the purpose of my art. The other half must be to tell my story in the most honest way that I can.

You don't see anything, do you? You see everything but the goddamn mind; you see all the little specs and crap, but you don't see what goes on, do you?

Your problem, dear chap, as I have had occassion to remind you, is that you see but you do not observe; you hear but you do not listen. For a literary man, Watson - and note that I do not comment on the merit of your latest account of my little problems - for a man with the pretenses of being a writer, you are singularly unobservant. Honestly, sometimes I am close to despair.

An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgements simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

It has always surprised me how little attention philosophers have paid to humor, since it is a more significant process of mind than reason. Reason can only sort out perceptions, but the humor process is involved in changing them.

Instead of waiting for our attention to be pulled towards something unusual, we can set out frameworks for 'directing' our attention in a conscious manner.

having learned a long time ago that the best way to handle unwanted men in public is to ignore them completely.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Sister Anne, do you see anyone coming?

Hew not too high lest the chips fall in thine eye.

It's better to crash into a nap than to nap into a crash.

Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop to look around once in a while you could miss it.

All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.

The attention span of a computer is only as long as its power cord.

Blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.

Don't miss the donut by looking through the hole.

No one is listening until you fart.

Don't needle the seamstress.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

Stay alive, don't text and drive.