Quotes About Distraction

Not being bored means not having to think about a lot of stupid stuff.

Beside the road cows are lazily chewing grass. They show zero interest in the runners. They're too busy eating grass to care about all these whimsical people and their nonsensical activities. And for their part the runners don't have the leisure to pay attention to what the cows are up to, either.

While you're playing yourself out in lonesome dissipation in front of a pinball machine, someone else might be reading through Proust. Still another might be engaged in heavy petting with a girlfriend at a drive-in theater showing of Paths of Courage. The one could well become a writer, witness to the age; the others, a happily married couple. Pinball machines, however, won't lead you anywhere. Just the replay light. Replay, replay, replay...

Even though I might go out on a date with a boy, emotionally I just wouldn't be able to concentrate. I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string. I'd be thinking about one unrelated thing after another. I don't know, I guess finally I want to be alone a little while longer. And I want to let my thoughts wander freely.

Killing time is not an easy job

The minute you leave your house, all phones sound alike.

and as long as I kept my body moving I could forget about the emptiness inside.

No one noticed that I had changed- that I had given up sleep entirely, that I was spending all my time reading, that my mind was someplace a hundred years - and hundreds of miles - from reality.

a highly fragmented day is also a very lazy day.

reading too much useless information makes you 46% less likely to think clearly

Don't water your weeds

Simplicity helps you keep the main thing the main thing and things unimportant.

I was trying my best to straighten out my life, but I always ended up in the middle of some festive waste of time.

Board games were invented to keep people from thinking so they won't plan a revolution.

I had to admit that I had a strong tendency to date jokers. I couldn't say no to them. I would sit across from someone I was dating and try to imagine who in the entire world would date this nimrod other than me. But I always had to have a boyfriend. They distracted me from being sad. They baffled me with their stupidity. I refused to believe that finding love was difficult.

What is it about mothers and the phone which, immediately you say you have to go, makes them think of nineteen completely irrelevant things they have to tell you that minute?

Realise, as the long hot days freakishly repeat themselves, one after the other, that whatever I am doing I really think I ought to be doing something else.

Unfortunately, poetry is not born in noise, in crowds, or on a bus. There have to be four walls and the certainty that the telephone will not ring. That's what writing is all about.

Writing is the process of finding something to distract you from writing, and of all the helpful distractions - adultery, alcohol and acedia, all of which aided our writing fathers - none can equal the Internet.

It usually takes me 20 to 90 minutes to write a song because once I start, I don't stop. If I start writing a song, and you try to have a conversation with me, you're a bad person.

The important thing is not to be too comfortable when you're writing. Noise in the street? That's good. The computer goes down? That's good. All these things are good. It has to be a little bit of a struggle.

I really like to entertain myself in various ways when I'm writing.

A picador is the guy in a bullfight who helps make sure the matador doesn't get killed by distracting the bull. That's what TV writing is. You're just distracting the bull long enough to stick around for the next set of commercials.

During the writing process, I tend not to listen to too much music. I obviously wear a lot of influences on my sleeve, but if I was listening to too many records, I would turn into too much of a monkey.