Quotes About Attention

Not all overly attentive boyfriends are psychos—but all psychos are overly attentive boyfriends

It ain't time to worry yet. I'll let you know when.

Atticus said if I paid no attention to him, Jem would come down. Atticus was right.

People generally see what they look for and hear what they listen for, and they have a right to subject their children to it.

If I hear a consonant I look around.

People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for." ? Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

We diminish people when we don't allow them to help us, or when we act like we don't need anything from them and they have nothing to offer us. We also diminish them when we allow them to go on and on, even after we've exceeded our capacity to pay attention.

you some examples, you should be aware of the fact that most people don't really forget names. They just don't remember them in the first place—often, they don't really hear them in the first place. Just think back and remember the many times you've been introduced to someone, when all you heard was a mumble.

That's all there is to it. It's like grabbing your mind by the scruff of the neck and forcing it to think of a specific thing at a specific moment. Force yourself to do it at first, and it will become habitual before you know it.

If you never noticed, it never happened.

Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can.

On any given day, something claims our attention. Anything at all, inconsequential things. A rosebud, a misplaced hat, that sweater we liked as a child, an old Gene Pitney record. A parade of trivia with no place to go. Things that bump around in our consciousness for two or three days then go back to wherever they came from... to darkness. We've got all these wells dug in our hearts. While above the wells, birds flit back and forth.

I'm not a fast reader. I like to linger over each sentence, enjoying the style. If I don't enjoy the writing, I stop.

You can't look too far ahead. Do that and you'll lose sight of what you're doing and stumble. I'm not saying you should focus solely on the details right in front of you, mind you. You've got to look ahead a bit or else you'll bump into something. You've got to conform to the proper order and at the same time keep an eye out for what's ahead. That's critical, no matter what you're doing.

The little things are important, Mr. Wind-Up Bird

The power to concentrate was the most important thing. Living without this power would be like opening one's eyes without seeing anything.

Suicides? Heart attacks? The papers didn't seem interested. The world was full of ways to die, too many to cover. Newsworthy deaths had to be exceptional. Most people go unobserved.

It's strange, isn't it?' the woman said in a pensive voice. 'Everything is blowing up around us, but there are still those who care about a broken lock, and others who are dutiful enough to try to fix it... But maybe that's the way it should be. Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart.

That sometimes in life we can't grasp the boundary between reality and unreality. Than boundary always seems to be shifting. As if the border between countries shifts from one day to the next depending on their mood. We need to pay close attention to that movement otherwise we won't know which side we're on.

Everything is blowing up around us, but there are still those who care about a broken lock, and others who are dutiful enough to try to fix it … But maybe that's the way it should be. Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart.

If you really want to know what's happening here and now, you've got to use your own eyes and your own judgment.

If you listen carefully, you can hear these things. If you look carefully, you'll see what you're after

It was the usual noontime university scene, but as I sat watching it with renewed attention, I became aware of a certain fact. In his or her own way, each person I saw before me looked happy. Whether they really were happy or just looked it, I couldn't tell. But they did look happy on this pleasant early afternoon at the end of September, and because of that I felt a kind of loneliness that was new to me, as if I were the only one here who was not truly part of the scene.

You can't look too far ahead. Do that and you'll lose sight of what you're doing and stumble.