Quotes About Distraction

Television is simply automated daydreaming.

It's a strange thing to have a successful television show because if it's too interesting... people don't really pay attention when they watch TV. It has to be good, but not so interesting that you really have to pay attention because people multitask. So, if a show demands your entire attention, it has a tough time making it.

When I get a job, I make phone calls to every single person I know and tell them not to bloody call me.

A certain number of people seek power over other people in a desperate attempt to find themselves. They fail, for self-discovery is spiritual in nature, not social or political. Authoritatively telling other people what to do is their distraction from an inner emptiness they can never fill.

I am quite a dreamer, and usually when someone tells a story, I tend to get distracted easily.

You know when you get into that thing where people want to discuss the relationship? I'd rather discuss what was on telly, avoid the issue, discuss anything other than the relationship.

I always think I should try to get to bed early, but then I can't stop myself from watching telly and fiddling around on the net.

I like to get up and get out. Otherwise you end up kicking about, and it's easy to flick the telly on; then before you know it, it is 11 A.M. and you haven't done anything.

I would like to have a go at TV. I think, especially when you have kids, that you spend a lot of time watching telly, and you think, 'How come I'm not doing that?'

I don't have a problem with the concept of a box set per se - we have many of them merrily lined up on the shelf above the telly. No, what gives me the pip is the fact that I'm never going to watch any of them.

One game I'm always on is 'NBA Jam.' And 'Bejeweled,' games like that, and 'Temple Run.'

Beer. Now there's a temporary solution.

You have to compete in the same way for your reader's attention. He is not looking for your letter. He has a thousand and one other things more important to him to occupy his mind. Why should he divert his attention from them to plow through pages of type about you or your projects?

How do those people who don't read books plug the gaps in their day? The journeys, the break-times, the evenings when the telly is crap, the time in bed before sleep arrives?

Talk to her, goddamnit. She ain't a stick of furniture. She is one of God's creatures, and she will hear you. I see these goddamned people walkin' dogs, yakking on their phones, makes me wanna kick their sissy asses. What they got a dog for, they want to talk on their phones? That dog there will understand you, Officer James. She will understand what's in your heart. Am I just shouting at the grass and dog shit out here, or are you reading what I am telling you?

Ramsey spun an uncurled paper clip

his nails clicked and clacked

It's an illness," she said, although she made the words sound like "it's uh nillness." Nillness, thought Strike, for a second distracted. He had slept badly. Nillness, that was where Lula Landry had gone, and where all of them, he and Rochelle included, were headed. Sometimes illness turned slowly to nillness, as was happening to Bristow's mother…sometimes nillness rose to meet you out of nowhere, like a concrete road slamming your skull apart.

When you have fans who are hassling you the entire game and you ignore them, they respect you because their job is to try and distract you. And if they don't distract you, that means you're focused on doing your job. And who knows, by the end, sometimes you even win them over.

If we don't know what we're supposed to be doing, we do lesser things, squandering ourselves on unworthy pursuits and trying to narcotize ourselves from the nagging feeling that life is essentially empty.

Someone said, "If the devil can't make you bad, he'll make you busy.

I must really be getting hungry," Swift-Killer thought. "Here I am gazing full on the topside of a handsome young male and I am not even interested.

One of the most common forms of laziness is staying busy.

I was soon bored, and my mind would drift.