Distraction Quotes - Page 11

• If happiness is a state of the inward life, we have to look for its chief obstructions not in outward conditions but in deeper places. Happiness depends in the last issue, as we saw, on the essential view of life. It is not a matter of distractions, nor even of mere pleasurable sensations. There may be an appearance of great prosperity with incurable sadness hidden at the heart, as there is an outward peace which is only a well-masked despair. The way to happiness is indeed harder than the way to success; for its chief enemies entrench themselves within the soul.

  Hugh Black

  Happiness, Heart, Sadness

  Hugh Black (1911). “Happiness”

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• Working memory capacity is really the ability to hold and manipulate information while you're actively trying to block out distraction.

  Amishi Jha

  Memories, Block, Trying

  Source: www.gq.com

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• There were some particular themes that I knew I wanted to hit, and when I got deeper into the project I found that it was becoming serious in and on its own. By the end, it's not very funny at all. I think, now, that part of the power of the book is that the jokes are kind of sparkly distractions.

  Moshe Kasher

  Book, Thinking, Becoming

  Interview with Marah Eakin, www.avclub.com. June 6, 2012.

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• My family is not a distraction. They're the most important thing in my life.

  Andrew Flintoff

  Important, My Family, Important Things

  Source: www.theguardian.com

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• There are times it's the only thing I want and I wonder how I'll ever go back to the world of noise and distraction. Other times, silence allows me to hear what's really going on in my head. Part of the reason we're on our phones or watching television or reading magazines is to give our heads something else to listen to other than our own thoughts.

  Eric Lange

  Reading, Phones, Giving

  "Eric Lange from FX's hit show The Bridge". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• When I talk to people who have teenagers now, their rooms are filled with screens. There are their phones and their DVD players and TVs and all these things to produce distractions for them, and I think it would be hard to find the time to create something. I think that's really changing something about adolescence.

  Adrian Tomine

  Teenager, Player, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I have been, earlier in my life, a lazy writer. I'd spend three hours at the gym to avoid writing, or I'd just find other distractions - reading, doing laundry, talking on the phone, etc. But suddenly I was like a laser beam: I was relentlessly focused, sometimes to the detriment of other things.

  Emily Susan Rapp

  Reading, Writing, Phones

  Source: therumpus.net

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• It's interesting how you can blur the line between acting and living and learn from your performances. I'm just trying to keep learning as much as I can and not get caught up in all the distractions that can play havoc with your mind.

  Kristen Stewart

  Play, Interesting, Mind

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• Writing a novel- actually picking the words and filling in paragraphs- is a tremendous pain in the ass. Now that TV's so good and the Internet is an endless forest of distraction, it's damn near impossible. That should be taken into account when ranking the all-time greats. Somebody like Charles Dickens, for example, who had nothing better to do except eat mutton and attend public hangings, should get very little credit.

  Steve Hely

  Pain, Taken, Writing

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• Anything that we do to make ourselves feel worthy and safe is a flight from the pain of powerlessness. Every pursuit of external power - every attempt to change the world or a person in order to make yourself feel valuable and safe - is a distraction from the pain of powerlessness.

  Gary Zukav

  Pain, Order, World

  "The One Thing That’s Keeping You From The Life You Want" by Gary Zukav, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 21, 2013.

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• I can write all the way through the morning, when my mind is clear, and there are no distractions.

  Karen Thompson Walker

  Morning, Writing, Mind

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• I love movies. That's still my favorite form of escape, and I usually end up going alone. I love to go and sit in the theater by myself, no distractions.

  Douglas Booth

  Movie Love, My Favorite, Ends

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• When we play games, our brains respond differently to stress and obstacles. We're better able to control our attention and ignore distractions.

  Jane McGonigal

  Stress, Games, Play

  Source: www.usatoday.com

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• I have found that lived out, the hardest place to be a Christian is to be in a nice prosperous country with a lot of entertainment options because there's so many distractions.

  Philip Yancey

  Christian, Country, Nice

  "Interview: Philip Yancey on U.S. Christianity, Faith That Matters". Interview with Lillian Kwon, www.christianpost.com. October 02, 2010.

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• It is a tragic hour, that hour when we are finally driven to reckon with ourselves, when every avenue of mental distraction has been cut off and our own life and all its ineffaceable failures closes about us like the walls of that old torture chamber of the Inquisition.

  Willa Cather

  Wall, Failure, Cutting

  Willa Cather (2016). “The First Willa Cather MEGAPACK®: 50 Classic Short Works”, p.134, Wildside Press LLC

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• My distraction's my defense against this lack of inspiration Against this slow deflation Yeah the further the horizon The more it holds my gaze The foreground's out of focus but you know I kinda hope it's just a phase Just a phase.

  Ani DiFranco

  Inspiration, Focus, Defense

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• The Internet, like all intellectual technologies has a trade off. As we train our brains to use it, as we adapt to the environment of the internet, which is an environment of kind of constant immersion and information and constant distractions, interruptions, juggling lots of messages, lots of bits of information.

  Nicholas G. Carr

  Technology, Brain, Intellectual

  Source: bigthink.com

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• The contradictions in Renan , his feminine sensibility, coquetry, unavowed egotism, and sudden emotional outbursts, all indicate a soul deliberately using distraction as a means of evasion. The perpetual equivocation bears witness to God in the same way as the twisting and turning of a hunted animal indicates the presence of an unseen hunter.

  Georges Bernanos

  Mean, Emotional, Animal

  Georges Bernanos (1999). “The Impostor”, p.152, U of Nebraska Press

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• Keep your head down, avoid all the distractions of being a writer today—all the shifts in the business, all the drama, all the debating about where publishing is going—and write the best story that you can. It sounds a bit glib, but I think this is advice a lot of people are having trouble following right now. It is so hard to focus. But that is the single key to success.

  Jeff Abbott

  Drama, Writing, Thinking

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• What the book does as a technology is shield us from distraction.

  Nicholas G. Carr

  Book, Technology, Shields

  Source: bigthink.com

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• When I've got massive projects to be getting on with, I find myself open to distractions, particularly when deadlines are involved.

  Max Tundra

  Projects, Deadline, Massive

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• With all the touring and distractions going on, I would get a sound together but I wouldn't have time to work on it. So I sat on the road with the sketches and saw how they revealed themselves emotionally.

  Justin Vernon

  Together, Sound, Saws

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• Before you sweat the logistics of focus: first, care. Care intensely.... Obsessing over the slipperiness of focus, bemoaning the volume of those devil "distractions," and constantly reassessing which shiny new "system" might make your life suddenly seem more sensible - these are all terrifically useful warning flares that you may be suffering from a deeper, more fundamental problem.... Know in your heart that what you're making or doing matters... First, care. Then, as you'll happily and unavoidably discover, all that "focus" business has a peculiar way of taking care of itself.

  Merlin Mann

  Heart, Sweat, Focus

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• Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit. When one is free from physical disabilities and mental distractions, the gates of the soul open.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Inspiring, Health, Soul And Body

  "Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom". Book by B.K.S. Iyengar (p. 48), September 19, 2006.

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• I raised you to be a thoroughbred. When thoroughbreds run, they wear blinders to keep their eyes focused straight ahead with no distractions, no other horses. They hear the crowd, but they don’t listen. They just run their own race. That’s what you have to do. Don’t listen to anyone comparing you to me or to anyone else. You just run your own race.

  Marlo Thomas

  Running, Horse, Eye

  "Running My Own Race" by Julie Carlson Miller, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 21, 2013.

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