Seven of the best book quotes about paying attention
01
“Your unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwellin’ on himself and start payin’ attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form o’ self-indulgence.”
“We had defended ourselves since memory against everything and everybody, considered all speech a code to be broken by us, and all gestures subject to careful analysis; we had become headstrong, devious, and arrogant. Nobody paid us any attention, so we paid very good attention to ourselves. Our limitations were not known to us—not then.”
“Finally he decides that he’ll give the little boy his yellow car. Tomorrow he’ll be nice to the little boy. Then Alfie falls asleep without paying any more attention to the monster.”
″...huh. Schoolteachers?′ why couldn’t they be like they were supposed to be and just chuck things at you if you weren’t paying attention? Instead they all seemed to have been worrying about him and sending notes home and getting him to see a specialist.”
Anne felt its application to herself, felt it in a nervous thrill all over her; and at the same moment that her eyes instinctively glanced towards the distant table, Captain Wentworth’s pen ceased to move, his head was raised, pausing, listening, and he turned round the next instant to give a look, one quick, conscious look at her.