Quotes About Focus

Close up your head; your brain is getting loose.

What is it you really want?" Emily said. "Because if what you want is the big career, then you need to stick with that—and stop torturing the person who can't or won't follow. I speak from some experience on that.

Rem tene, verba sequntur (Keep to the subject, and the words will follow)

Icouldn't get a thing right this morning. My mind just wasn't on my work. I could barely look at the boy. I couldn't meet his eye.

Once he began to speak, the sound of it was so compelling that you focused all your thoughts upon the words, and not upon the man who uttered them. It was a voice full of light and dark. Light not only as it glimmers, but also as it glares. Dark not only as it brings cold and fear, but also as it gives rest and shade.

training to be a

I've inherited a core belief, to wit: don't rely on some other sod for your emotional sustenance. Find something absorbing to do—something so absorbing that you don't have time to dwell on the woe-is-me stuff.

U bent toch Gerard Reve, die het altijd over één ding tegelijk heeft, en pas als hij dat afgehandeld heeft verder gaat met iets anders? U bent toch een gewone katholieke volksjongen en geen volksverlakker? Nu, het doet mij echt goed dat van U te horen, waaruit blijkt dat U mijn werk begrijpt en waardeert.

looked up. Benny was not reading any more. He was looking straight ahead. But he was not looking at anything. "What's the matter, Ben?" asked Mr. Alden.

It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business.

You have to know what you want to get it.

Be the flame, not the moth.

When a man gets it into his head to do something, and when he exclusively occupies himself in that design, he must succeed, whatever the difficulties. That man will become Grand Vizier or Pope.

Running overtime is the one unforgivable error a lecturer can make. After fifty minutes (one microcentury as von Neumann used to say) everybody's attention will turn elsewhere.

Jerry Sternin) scoprì gli esempi positivi e li diffuse in una sorta di contagio benefico. Si concentrò su quello che funzionava per riprodurlo, piuttosto che su quello che non funzionava per cercare, inutilmente, di ripararlo.

The winning investor's objective should be to have one or two big winners rather than dozens of very small profits" (How to Make Money in Stocks, 4th ed. [New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009], 274).

I want to be the best in whatever I do.

I lost all feeling a long time ago. Basketball is basketball. It doesn't matter what floor I'm on.

I decided one day early on in high school that I wanted to be great at basketball, not just a good basketball player. I would go to the elementary school by my house and shoot thousands of shots all day, every day.

As happy as I am off the floor, on the floor I am the opposite. I don't take any crap.

If you take away the last few years, from my last year in Washington, and you think about my career, there was nothing but hard work. I was in the gym three or four times a day, working on my skills. If we lost a game, and I thought I played bad, I'm staying in the gym to keep shooting. That's what I did. That's what I was known for: I was a gym rat.

What we put into every moment is all we have.

Self-consciousness comes from focusing your attention inwards, on to yourself, so that you become painfully aware of what is happening to you. At its worst, self-consciousness dominates your attention and makes it difficult to think of anything else but your inner experience – and this can become totally paralyzing.

Writers definitely need spurs.