Quotes About Distraction

Evil is whatever distracts

he spent many an hour in only the most superficial appearance of actual work

I once heard of a young man whose mind was taken up day and night with thoughts of the Castle, he neglected everything else, people feared for his ordinary faculty of reason since all his faculties were always up at the Castle, but in the end it turned out that it wasn't actually the Castle he was thinking of but only the daughter of a scullery maid at the offices, he got her, and then all was fine again.

I - and, I suspect, millions of Americans like me, Republicans and Democrats alike - couldn't care less about Obama's middle name or the ridiculous six-degrees-of-separation game that is the William Ayers non-issue.

You can be watching the greatest film in the world, and if you hear your neighbor getting into a fight, you're at the window.

Embrace the faff. Stare out of the window. Bend paperclips. Stand in the middle of the room trying to remember what you came downstairs for. Pace. Drum your fingertips. Move papers around. Hum. Look at the garden.

Since I've been hired to contribute to the storyline of 'Doom 4' I can say what was always true anyway. I'm working. You see, for a writer, lots of stuff that doesn't look like working is actually working. Looking out of the window, for example. Balancing a pencil on the edge of the desk in order to find its exact fulcrum. Playing 'Doom.'

We have got so caught up in an insular world that swings between our phones, our computers and our heads that we have forgotten to look out of the window, and say, 'Hey! It's raining.'

If there was a distraction I'd get up and jump out the window. I was quite out of hand. In schools like that I don't think they expect that girls are going to behave in such an outrageous fashion.

I never tried Pokemon Go. I figured I'd get too addicted to it. I did play Pokemon Snap on Nintendo 64, so that window is closed for me.

I used to do my best thinking while staring out airplane windows. The seat-back video system put a stop to that. Now I sit and watch old' Friends' and 'Everybody Loves Raymond' episodes. Walking is good, but here again, technology has interfered. I like to listen to iTunes while I walk home. I guess I don't think anymore.

My concentration span is truly that of a gnat. Some people have this ladder, and that's all there is - the ladder. I have the ladder, too, but there's a building around it with scaffolding, and lots of windows for me to peek into. Then suddenly I'll remember, 'Oh, there's the ladder. I should be concentrating on that.'

Despite the fact the studio looks out of five windows onto a picture perfect view of sky, hills and wide open spaces, I work with my blinds firmly drawn, daylight filtered through their white canvas, a painterly northern light falling through two big skylights above my table, and nothing visible outside to distract me.

I'm not one of those who can listen to music and write. I need the door closed. Windows shut. Facing the wall. No birds tweeting, views of nature, and so forth.

I started playing poker in 2003 during my pregnancy, to distract myself from my awful morning sickness. For months all I did was cry and play Texas Hold'em.

I spend a huge amount of time writing about the book instead of writing the actual text.

I'm trying to call more and text less. I don't want to check my phone 5,000 times a day anymore. It was getting to me. I'm bringing 'old' back.

The dirty little secret that nobody likes to talk about is that things just might have been better before the Internet. We had more time to ourselves before cell phones and text messaging and Facebook consumed our lives.

Acting doesn't bring anything to a text. On the contrary, it detracts from it.

People who text a lot are not my favorite thing.

I don't text, I don't have a Blackberry. Literally, I just have a cell phone that I haven't programmed and the whole Bluetooth. No. I don't even have an earpiece for my cell phone.

I would like to ban people being allowed to text while in a crosswalk.

Most of us have to spend a lot of energy to learn how to drive a car. Then we have to spend the rest of our lives over-concentrating as we drive and text and eat a burrito and put on makeup. As a result, 30,000 people die every year in a car accident in the U.S.

People text when they're meant to actually be driving. So imagine what they do when they think the car's got it under control.