Quotes About Attention

If you have never said "Excuse me" to a parking meter or bashed your shins on a fireplug, you are probably wasting too much valuable reading time.

I'm not the settling-down type, I'm afraid. I think I'm cursed with a touch of Dating ADD.

When a man likes you, he will be interested in finding out what you like. If he makes you happy, he feels more secure. Everything men do is intended to impress women.

Forcing him to talk about feelings all the time will not only make you seem needy, it will eventually make him lose respect. And when he loses respect, he'll pay even less attention to your feelings.

Keeping it short and to the point is essential, otherwise he won't hear a single word.

Men don't respond to words. They respond to no contact.

Ignore him and he is intrigued. Make him the center of attention all the time and he runs.

Forcing him to talk about feelings all the time will not only make you seem needy, it will eventually make him lose respect. And when he loses respect, he'll pay even less attention to your feelings.

Men don't respond to words. What they respond to is "no contact".

when gentlemen stare at my bosom, they don't hear a word I say. I strongly believe that if trees sprouted breasts tomorrow, they would soon be wearing wedding rings.

Wait, here comes Cooper. In which case, carry on with your melodramatic moaning, but put some majesty into it. You know he lives to hear you judge everything as unworthy.

The feeling that 'no one is listening to me' makes us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us.

Phones have become woven into a fraught sense of obligation in friendship. . . . Being a friend means being "on call"—tethered to your phone, ready to be attentive, online.

Every time you check your phone in company, what you gain is a hit of stimulation, a neurochemical shot, and what you lose is what a friend, teacher, parent, lover, or co-worker just said, meant, felt.

Because you can text while doing something else, texting does not seem to take time but to give you time. This is more than welcome; it is magical.

We miss out on necessary conversations when we divide our attention between the people we're with and the world on our phones. Or when we go to our phones instead of claiming a quiet moment for ourselves

Addiction is to the habits of mind that technology allows us to practice.

In the classic children's story The Velveteen Rabbit, a stuffed animal becomes "real" because of a child's love. Tamagotchis do not wait passively but demand attention and claim that without it they will not survive. With this aggressive demand for care, the question of biological aliveness almost falls away. We love what we nurture; if a Tamagotchi makes you love it, and you feel it loves you in return, it is alive enough to be a creature.

Swaddle in our favorites, we missed out on what was in our peripheral vision.

Children contend with parents who are physically close, tantalizingly so, but mentally elsewhere.

Online, we easily find "company" but are exhausted by the pressures of performance. We enjoy continual connection but rarely have each other's full attention. We can have instant audiences but flatten out what we say to each other in new reductive genres of abbreviation. We like it that the Web "knows" us, but this is only possible because we compromise our privacy, leaving electronic bread crumbs that can be easily exploited, both politically and commercially.

Children content with parents who are physically close, tantalizingly so, but mentally elsewhere.

What is a place if those who are physically present have their attention on the absent? At a café a block from my home, almost everyone is on a computer or smartphone as they drink their coffee. These people are not my friends, yet somehow I miss their presence.

So, instead of doing your email as you push your daughter in her stroller, talk to her. Instead of putting a digital tablet in your son's baby bouncer, read to him and chat about the book. Instead of a quick text if you find a conversation going stale, make an effort to engage your peers.