#attention

To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it’s because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that’s where phrases like ‘deadly dull’ or ‘excruciatingly dull’ come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient, low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention. Admittedly, the whole thing’s pretty confusing, and hard to talk about abstractly…but surely something must lie behind not just Muzak in dull or tedious places any more but now also actual TV in waiting rooms, supermarkets’ checkouts, airport gates, SUVs’ backseats. Walkman, iPods, BlackBerries, cell phones that attach to your head. This terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I can’t think anyone really believes that today’s so-called ‘information society’ is just about information. Everyone knows it’s about something else, way down. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#boredom #life #life

You can't get attention of one who focused on himself. ↗

— Toba Beta

#center #focus #focus

Give a man your attention Lose his Ignore a man Gain his attention ↗

— KC Rhoads

#men #relationships #men

Happiness is like a cat, If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay not attention to it and go about your business, you'll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap. ↗

— William Bennett

#against #attention #avoid #business #call

I've never had a bank account in Switzerland since 1984. Why would the Swiss do this to me? Maybe the Swiss are trying to divert attention from the Holocaust gold scandal. ↗

— Benazir Bhutto

#attention #bank #bank account #divert #gold

If you want to get my attention, wear a pirate outfit. ↗

— Michelle Branch

#get #outfit #pirate #want #wear

Doonesbury had the requisite and overwhelming influence in 1980, as it did on any college cartoonist who was paying attention, of course. ↗

— Berkeley Breathed

#attention #cartoonist #college #course #did

Brooke and I share some similarities. We're both passionate, fiercely loyal people. But she is far more outlandish than I'd ever be, particularly with her body and her sexuality. Brooke has made herself weak for men - she only gained self-confidence from their attention. ↗

— Sophia Bush

#body #both #brooke #ever #far

I'm not one of those people that goes into details of my personal life on national TV to get attention. Some things are better left unsaid. ↗

— Mariah Carey

#better #details #get #goes #i

The first thing that happens is that you're overwhelmed by so much attention. It's just so unnatural. Only people who've been in that position can realize what it's like. I mean, you have to be there. ↗

— Chevy Chase

#been #first #first thing #happens #i