You make a mistake, you better hope I wasn't paying attention and didn't see it, but if I catch you doing it and you think I'm not paying attention, then that's when you get in trouble.
You think everybody's paying attention to what you're doing. No, they're paying attention to what's interesting to them.
But the sensibility of the writer, whether fiction or poetry, comes from paying attention. I tell my students that writing doesn't begin when you sit down to write. It's a way of being in the world, and the essence of it is paying attention.
In certain ways, we, many of us, stopped paying attention to the world. I have to think we would have moved on the whole climate issue in a different way if we'd been paying better attention.
We say that children are bad at paying attention, but we really mean that they're bad at not paying attention - they easily get distracted by anything interesting.
Everybody is saying, 'ESPN is not cool, no one is paying attention to ESPN, they're all paying attention to the Barstools of the world.' Why? Because we're authentic.
There's no certainty to the next couple of years, but people are paying attention now. And I want to put out a record when people are paying attention, because that's when it has the best chance of being heard.
But writers experience the world and themselves in a unique way. We look for meaning. We see it even when we are not paying attention, which is seldom because, as writers, paying attention is what we do. We are scribes to the ticking of the days, and we have a job to do. We are not at peace unless we are doing it.
AC/DC, Def Leppard, Alice Cooper - I learned stories of all these guys. That's when I fell in love with Queen, which is one of my favorite bands of all time... I started paying attention to what made music good. I started paying attention to why I liked it.
Sometimes during the day, I consciously focus on some ordinary object and allow myself a momentary "paying-attention." This paying-attention gives meaning to my life. I don't know who it was, but someone said that careful attention paid to anything is a window into the universe. Pausing to think this way, even for a brief moment, is very important. It gives quality to my day.
We can think about how we reduce the pain in paying. So, for example, credit cards are wonderful mechanisms to reduce the pain of paying. If you go to a restaurant and you are paying cash, you would feel much worse than if you were paying with credit card. Why? You know the price, there's no surprise, but if you're paying cash, you feel a bit more guilt.
I commend the parents who are sending their children to a Catholic school, because they're making a sacrifice, and they're paying twice for their child's education: They're paying the tuition, and they're paying taxes.
I should have been paying Coach Saban instead of them paying me because of the amount of knowledge that you learn in three years, and you view 'The Process.'
James - "Are you paying attention or just trying to make me look like an idoit?" Elizabeth - "Oh, I'm definately paying attention. If you look like an idiot it has nothing to do with me.
I have never studied the art of paying compliments to women; but I must say that if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise of women were applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice for their conduct during this war.
The challenge is, well, there's a huge challenge, which is when you're improvising, you're meant to sort of clear your mind completely, just be open and funny, and paying, you know, paying attention.