Quotes about Attention

Details matter, it's worth waiting to get it right.

In high school I was very much involved in poetry. You cannot read a poem quickly. There's too much going on there. There are rhythms and alliterations. You have to read poetry slow, slow, slow to absorb it all.

If you're famous, I don't - for the life of me - I don't understand why any famous person would ever be on Twitter.

so much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty, and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating and destructive effect upon society than the others.

I became a much more ardent citizen and feminist than anyone about me in the intermediate years would have dreamed possible. I had learned that if you wanted to institute any kind of reform, you could get far more attention if you had a vote than if you lacked one.

Listen to your life. All moments are key moments.

From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel, literature is asking us to pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady on the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.

Payattention.  As a summation of all that I have had to say as a writer, I would settle for that.  And as a talisman or motto for that journey in search of a homeland, which is what faith is, I would settle for that too.

So generally—and this is not a complicated point, God knows—the arts frame our life for us so that we will experience it. Pay attention to it.

It seems to me almost before the Bible says anything else, it is saying that—how important it is to be alive and to pay attention to being alive, pay attention to each other, pay attention to God as he moves and as he speaks. Pay attention to where life or God has tried to take you.

Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves.

Does the emerald lose its beauty for lack of admiration?