Quotes About Attention

I think the business of writing a great deal of it is the business of paying attention to your characters, to the world they live in, to the story you have to tell, but just a kind of deep attention and out of that if you pay attention properly the story will tell you what it needs.

After a while, you just want transportation, and things like cool cars or motorcycles are all about getting attention. I get all the attention I could ever need, so I kind of like being in a minivan and people not paying so much attention to me.

I'm trying to cause people to be interested in the particulars of their lives because I think that's one thing literature can do for us. It can say to us: pay attention. Pay closer attention. Pay stricter attention to what you say to your son.

As the power of governments wanes, corporations become ever more powerful. Sometimes they do things that aren't so good. We should pay attention. Steve Jobs was saying, "Don't pay attention to all that stuff. Pay attention to the product you've got in your hand."

If an artwork never gets any attention from anybody, then obviously it's got problems. If it gains attention from a very small elite, then it's presumably doing something. Finnegans Wake gets a lot of attention from certain people who become passionate about it, who are usually very good readers in general. Although - I often talk about costs and benefits - it seems to me the costs of reading Finnegans Wake are not worth the benefits, however many there may be. And it's the same with the more arcane among poets, Zukofsky and so on.

Art begs you to notice it. Why? Because art is God's way of saying hello. So pay attention to poetry. Pay attention to music. Pay attention to paintings and sculptures and photo exhibits and ballets and plays. Don't let all this go unnoticed. Your world is shouting out to you, revealing something intrinsically glorious about itself. Listen carefully. Love art, the way art loves life.

Pay attention to the hungry, both in this country and around the world. Pay attention to the poor. Pay attention to our responsibilities for world peace. We are our brother's keeper.

Unless a man is prepared to ask a woman to be his wife, what right has he to claim her exclusive attention? Unless she has been asked to marry him, why would a sensible woman promise any man her exclusive attention? If, when the time has come for a commitment, he is not man enough to ask her to marry him, she should give him no reason to presume that she belongs to him.

I think a part of it was the way my parents raised me. I think that's part of being raised in a big Latin family. To get an adult's attention you have to do something crazy, and my way was dancing on tables and singing and dancing. That was my way of getting everyone's attention. I'm loud and I like being loud.

Focus your attention around the naval area, feel that spot. Visualize it. Do whatever it takes. When thoughts come in and out of your mind, pay no attention. You just stay right on that spot!

I get all dressed up with that Marianne Faithfull face, and the next thing I know, I'm blurting out things that I shouldn't, trying to get attention when, really, I've got everybody's attention already.

I think of empathy as a set of cumulative effects, ideally - that it can be a force shaping your habits, shaping where you put your attention and then - if you're hard on yourself, in good ways - pushing you to translate that attention into action, on whatever scale.

Attention leads to immortality. Carelessness leads to death. Those who pay attention will not die, while the careless are as good as dead already.

You have to give the press confrontations. When you give them confrontations, you get attention; when you get attention, you can educate.

Indeed we have great reason to rejoice. If life and its rushed pace and many stresses have made it difficult for you to feel like rejoicing, then perhaps now is a good time to refocus on what matters most. Strength comes not from frantic activity but from being settled on a firm foundation of truth and light. It comes from placing our attention and efforts on the basics of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. It comes from paying attention to the divine things that matter most.

Mindfulness means moment-to-moment, non-judgmental awareness. It is cultivated by refining our capacity to pay attention, intentionally, in the present moment, and then sustaining that attention over time as best we can. In the process, we become more in touch with our life as it is unfolding.

I came from a big family, with not enough attention. It's classic. I wasn't the baby, but was second to last. It's absolutely the same story that most people have in this [film] business, they're the middle children. I've encountered some people, and it's weird to me, that they were the youngest in their family. I don't understand how that works, they got the attention.

Attention is the key to life. Whatever you really give your attention to, you become. Whatever you really concentrate upon will come into your life. We grow into the thing that fills our thoughts as inevitably as the stream merges into the ocean at last.

Whatever you put attention on will start manifesting in your life. Intention, attention, manifestation; that is how the universe works.

I was only in the public eye because I was annoying. You know how neurotic people may ask for one thing when they may really want another thing? It was like I was asking for attention, but I didn't really want attention.

Giving generously in romantic relationships, and in all other bonds, means recognizing when the other person needs our attention. Attention is an important resource.

You create attention to attract attention.

It's kind of bizarre, isn't it? Having that kind of attention. I'm not under the microscope in the same fashion that a lot of the other cast members are, so I think I can slide under the radar a little bit more, but getting any attention at all is completely new for me.

We shape our life by deciding to pay attention to it. It is the direction of our attention and its intensity that will determines what we accomplish and how well.

The Confucians paid a great deal attention to ritual, highlighting the ones that expressed the sorts of affective attitudes one wants to cultivate, engaging in them with keen awareness of their value for shaping and reshaping the self, and insisting on the need to be emotionally present to their significance for one's relationship to others. If we Americans want to rebuild our capacities for a shared life, we would do well to pay attention to all this.

What is yoga ? In simple words, it is taking your attention to the Spirit. This is yoga. What does the kundalini do ? She raises your attention and takes it to the Spirit. Only after knowing the Spirit you can know God.

We usually do pay attention to our outer appearance, typically noticing whatever part of our bodies we are unhappy about. It behooves us, however, to get on very good terms with more than just the surface of our bodies as we grow older; for if we don't listen to our bodies and pay attention to our physical needs and pleasures, this vehicle that we need to be running well to take us into a long and comfortable life, will limit what we can do and who we become.

If typography is calling attention to itself, it's taking that attention away from what the words are saying.

Living an awakened life [...] is just a matter of where our attention is being placed. It is possible for our human-beingness and our true nature or presence to exist wonderfully well together, enriching each other through their closeness. It is through the power of our attention that we experience one or the other or both.

If I’d known Ashton wanted my attention at any point I would have pushed Nicole aside and given her my undivided attention. But most of the time she was wrapped in Sawyer’s arms and I needed the distraction Nicole provided.

How do we accomplish this matter of gathering life together in God? We must begin primarily by refocusing our attention keeping our minds and hearts directed toward God. The essence of the centered life is attention to God in all we think, say and do. It is the growing realization of His presence in our most down-to-earth living.

Togetherness has to do with focused attention. It is giving someone your undivided attention. As humans, we have a fundamental desire to connect with others. We may be in the presence of people all day long, but we do not always feel connected.

The patterns of activity of neurons in sensory areas can be altered by patterns of attention. Experience coupled with attention leads to physical changes in the structure and future functioning of the nervous system. This leaves us with a clear physiological fact…moment by moment we choose and sculpt how our ever-changing minds will work. We choose who we will be in the next moment in a very real sense, and these choices are left embossed in physical form in our material selves.

There's a quality we could call vertical attention, which is an attention upward toward ancestors, spiritual states, angels, gods.

Whatever you are giving your attention to, already has a vibration of its own, and as you give your attention to it, you include its vibration in your vibration...and then your point of attraction is affected.

You don’t pay attention man/that’s why your money is the size of your attention span.

My attention span is very limited, and I watch just one or two movies a year.

They cannot count on the press and they cannot count on Congressional committees to bring the problems of the scientific community to their own attention, or to police the scientific community.

Campaigns and elections are not a game. They're not a game. They're about trying to change America. We're the wealthiest country in the history of the world. We should not be having Flint, Michigan, or African-American communities all over this country where schools are failing. Those are the issue we got to pay attention to and not at this as come kind of silly game. And that is the critique that bothers me. That's what bothers me about media coverage.

We divert our attention from disease and death as much as we can; the slaughterhouses are huddled out of sight and never mentioned, so that the world we recognize officially in literature and in society is a poetic fiction far handsomer, cleaner and better than the world that really is.

As soon as I sat down to write music, really, with Café Blue. I just can't think about that when I sit down to write. I don't let myself. I actually don't allow myself to look at sales figures. Ever. I get the general impression that I'm not selling like Norah Jones, but I don't really pay too much attention, because I think it would corrupt me.

Being is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. But don't seek to grasp it with your mind. Don't try to understand it. You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally.

When you are moving toward an objective," said Petrus, "it is very important to pay attention to the road. It is the road that teaches us the best way to get there, and the road enriches us as we walk its length.

The bullshitter is neither on the side of the true or the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

Most songs come from being attentive. Attentive to life, attentive to scripture, attentive to your heart. Pay attention!

You will never have this day with your children again. Tomorrow they will be a little bigger then they are today. This day is a gift. Breathe and notice. Smell and touch them; study their faces and little feet and pay attention. Relish the charms of the present. Enjoy today mama. It will be over before you know it.

Putin is now nationalist. And what he does is, he tells the Russian people, OK, you may have a little less chicken in your pot, but I'm making Russia great again. Look what we're doing all other the world. Everyone is paying attention to us. And Russia is a great power, on par with the United States and others.

If the purpose of lamentation be to excite pity, it is surely superfluous for age and weakness to tell their plaintive stories; for pity presupposes sympathy, and a little attention will show them, that those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.