Quotes About Distraction

I tried to cooperate with grace, which is to say, I did not turn on the TV.

I need to bring up radio station KFKD, or K-Fucked, here. It is perhaps the single greatest obstacle to listening to your broccoli that exists for writers.

T. S. Eliot wrote, 'Teach us to care and not to care / Teach us to sit still.' We long for this, and yet we check our smartphones every ten minutes for news, texts, distraction.

Not knowing how to feed the spirit, we try to muffle its demands in distraction...What matters is that one be for a time inwardly attentive.

Now, instead of planting our solitude with our own dream blossoms, we choke the space with continuous music, chatter and companionship to which we do not even listen. It is simply there to fill the vacuum. When the noise stops there is no inner music to take its place. We must re-learn to be alone.

Plotinus was preaching the dangers of multiplicity of the world back in the third century. Yet, the problem is particularly and essentially woman's. Distraction is, always has been, and probably always will be, inherent in woman's life.

There's a terrible temptation to look at only what you want to, and carefully avoid seeing anything else.

the oldest trick in the book of a demagogue to blame all your troubles on an identifiable group. Turn people's attention to something they can hate, and they'll leave you alone.

Viejas verdades y magias antiguas, revoluciones e inventos, todo conspira para distraernos de la pasión que, de un modo u otro, nos vence a todos. Y, cansados por fin de esta complejidad, soñamos con el tiempo lejano en que nos sentábamos en el regazo de nuestra madre y cada beso era la consumación perfecta del deseo.

You play with your toys and your money and all your fine things, and you forget. You forget and that's why you're happy.

He looked away as if he were again disengaging himself from the present.

Old truths and ancient magic, revolution and invention, all conspire to distract us from the passion that in one way or another defeats us all. And weary finally of this complexity, we dream of that long-ago time when we sat upon our mother's knee and each kiss was the perfect consummation of desire. What can we do but reach for the embrace that must now contain both heaven and hell: our doom again and again and again.

She was too distracted by the alluring creature standing before her table, with his cordial blue eyes.

Oh, the thunder of ghosts and their aftermath. Let it distract me from Stirling Oliver in my lethal arms and the bloody bride lying on the bed.

Reading is the first to go, my mother used to say, meaning that it was a luxury the brain dispensed with under duress. She claimed that after my father died she never again picked up anything more demanding than the morning paper. At the time I had thought that was sort of melodramatic of her, but now I found myself reading the same paragraph six times over, and I still couldn't have told you what it was about.

My family can always tell when I'm well into a novel because the meals get very crummy.

Carla was pleasant but distracted, as if she were wondering whether she'd left a burner on at home.

There is always an enormous temptation to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for itsy-bitsy years on end.

If you see everything through hovercams and feed stories, you wind up blind to what's right in front of you.

The 'busy' thing isn't a commitment, it's an evasion.

Where did your art go while you were tweeting?

Time to get off the social media merry-go-round that goes faster and faster but never gets anywhere.

It's important to be aware of how multitasking can stimulate us into mindlessness, giving the illusion of productivity while stealing our focus and harming performance. "When you are walking, walk. When you are sitting, sit," is ancient wisdom.

Concentration Attention Multitasking Boredom Procrastination