attention-span

The average buyer in bookshop spends 8 seconds on the front cover and 15 seconds on the back cover before deciding whether to purchase the book or not. On average, he does not get past page 18. See? The odds are stacked against us writers!

I get into a tearing passion about something I know very little about, and when I learn more my passion ebbs away.

An exceedingly confident student would in theory make a terrible student. Why would he take school seriously when he feels that he can outwit his teachers?

Storytelling--that's not the future. The future, I'm afraid, is flashes and impulses. It's mode up of moments and fragments, and stories won't survive.

The generation that had information, but no context. Butter, but no bread. Craving, but no longing.

The most dangerous thing about an academic education is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract thinking instead of simply paying attention to what__ going on in front of me.

The resource of generational history is accorded little attention our society, which seems ever more obsessed with making __ew_ and __etter_ synonymous. From my family I became aware of the importance of passing along wisdom from one generation to the next. Yet despite the increasing proliferation of digital recording and other communication technologies, we__e passing on less knowledge today than our parents did through the oral tradition alone. We__e drowning in photographs and videos, capturing every mundane moment of our birthdays, holidays, and vacations. Yet these can be no more than pleasant distraction, only scratching the surface of our real relationships.

I don't like phones. You can't be sure people are paying attention to you when you're talking to them.