Quotes About Attention

Most days I am in public. If I go to the store, with social media, I'm in public. It might as well be a press conference.

When people are running up to me in the grocery store screaming, 'Oh my God! Oh my God!' that's when I know I'm swervin'. As long as people are recognizing you and you matter to them, then you're doing something right.

If the store were your own business, you'd escort the customer to a product's location in the store and refer to the customer by name.

The only thing with press attention is that it can be very draining on our energy store.

It is the stories we don't get, the ones we miss, pass over, fail to recognize, don't pick up on, that will send us to hell.

Narratively speaking, innocent misunderstandings are disappointing. Arbitrary events are also disappointing. The stories that really grab our attention involve not accidents but people doing things on purpose - to get things they desperately want.

I can sketch up a storm, and I'm very involved in how clothes are constructed, but I have a short attention span.

A good picture book should have events that are visually arresting - the pictures should call attention to what is happening in the story.

In the normal flow of a conversation, our attention is divided. We hear parts of what other people are saying, in order to follow and keep the conversation going. At the same time, we're planning what we'll say next, some exciting story of our own.

Nobody cares about your autograph. There are cameras everywhere, and there are media outlets for them to 'file their story'.

It doesn't bother me when people try to deconstruct my songs - because at least they're looking at the lyrics, and paying attention to the way the story is told.

Don't forget that the only two things people read in a story are the first and last sentences. Give them blood in the eye on the first one.

Master storytellers like Jeffrey Archer and Arthur Hailey use simple language. But they manage to grab the attention of the readers right from page one. I'll consider myself a good storyteller the day people believe it's OK to be late for work or postpone deadlines just to finish reading my book.

I'm just kind of odd. There are dark forces in the world, and if you pay attention to what's going on around you, you end up incorporating it into the storytelling. Maybe it's some aspect of myself that's coming through that people are seeing, that I am in fact a quiet psycho.

There is commerciality in storytelling, even in a film or a piece of literature. These things exist. That's why stories came to be: to hold attention and, while you're not looking, you'll get hopefully some nutritional value that the author has been working up. That's narrative; that's passing stuff down.

I've spoken before on how the art of storytelling has been lost a bit. I definitely feel 'Empire' is helping to reprogram us back to that place where we pay attention and invest emotionally in the records and the artists.

I had been around Bruce Willis for two straight movies, so I saw the way the paparazzi follows him and the way the public is with him. He's a mega-star over in Europe.

I don't listen to anybody's full record anymore and when I did, I don't think I listened to the whole record. I'm sorry, and I don't care who it is, if it's the Beatles, I can't listen to an hour and a half of anybody straight so I guess that's just my personal preference.

There is an actor's responsibility in presenting the emotional content of the lyrics to an audience. But whether you do that in a straightforward fashion or an ironic fashion or a blase fashion is all about opportunities, and singers are missing opportunities as artists if they don't pay attention to the lyric.

You have to have your feet in the right position to make a pass, a lot of small things go into making a simple, straightforward pass.

I hadn't even released my first proper single when I started to feel the strain of attention. But I don't believe that it was the attention that was giving me panic attacks. I think it was everything in my life colliding at the same time. It really did get to a serious point where I couldn't even walk down the street without getting the pain.

It puts you in a kind of a strange situation where everybody is looking at every little thing you do.

Fame is a very strange animal.

Sometimes I forget I have children, which is very strange. I feel guilty about it, as if my inattention will cause something to happen to them, even when I'm not responsible for them - that God will punish me.