Quotes: Linda Stone

"Attention is the most powerful tool of the human spirit. We can enhance or augment our attention with practices like meditation, breathwork, and exercise, diffuse it with technologies like email, texting, and social media, or alter it with pharmaceuticals. In the end, though, we are fully responsible for how we choose to use this extraordinary resource." 

–– Linda Stone (b. 1955), American writer and consultant

Source: Jeff Karp. LIT: Use Nature's Playbook to Energize Your Brain, Spark Ideas, and Ignite Action. New York: William Morrow, 2024; p. 82. 

via: Commonplace Book 2024, 2025, p. 64.

Quotes: Walter Scott

"... when I was in the classroom, it felt like the only way for me to keep my attention focused on what the teacher was saying was to doodle at the same time. It creates a buffer that the information can filter through if I'm doing something cognitively at the same time." 

–– Walter Scott (b. 1985), Canadian artist and graphic novelist 

Source: Emily Donaldson. "Walter Scott pulls no punches in Wendy series." The Globe and Mail, Saturday August 3, 2024; p. R8. 

via: Commonplace Book, 2024, 2025, p. 57.

Quotes: John Foster Dulles

"A man's accomplishments in life are the cumulative effect of his attention to detail." 

–– John Foster Dulles (1888-1959) American politician, lawyer, and diplomat 

via: Sketchbook M 13, 2024, 2025, p. 18.

Quotes: Eric Booth

"We are shaped by what we extend ourselves into; our attending and our participation inform our lives. We must be very careful with the objects and actions we present to ourselves and to our children because we are changed by them."

–– Eric Booth, American actor, teacher, and author 

Source: Eric Booth. The Everyday Work of Art. Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, 1997; p. 24.

via: Commonplace Book 2006-2009, 2009, p. 186.  

Quotes: Dorothea Lange

"Art is a by-product of an act of total attention."

–– Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), American documentary photographer and photojournalist 

Source: Women's Art 1, Instagram, Monday September 23, 2024.

via: Sketchbook N 14, 2004, p. 24. 

Quotes: Mary Oliver

"Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness – an empathy – was necessary if the attention was to matter." 

–– Mary Oliver (1935-2019), American poet 

via 2020 Aboveground Art Supplies Knapsack Sketchbook, 2024 p. 44. 

Quotes: William James

"My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind – without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos."

–– William James (1842-1910), American psychologist and philosopher 

Quotes: Booker T. Washington

"Success in life is founded upon attention to the small things rather than to the large things; to the every day things nearest to us rather than to the things that are remote and uncommon."

 –– Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856-1915), American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several U.S. presidents 

via: Day In & Day Out Notes, 2024, p. 52. 

Quotes: Unknown

"Where the attention is, that becomes lively." 

–– unknown 

Source: David Lynch. Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2006. 

via: Day In & Day Out Notebook, 2018, p. 21.

Quotes: Bruce Cockburn

"Pay attention to the poet. You need him and you know it."

–– Bruce Cockburn (b. 1945), Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist  

Source: Globe and Mail Letter to the Editor, Saturday September 11, 2021, p. 010. 

via: Knapsack Art Alternatives Sketchbook J 2020-2023, p. 18.

Quotes: Ellen Dissanayake

"My own opinion is that we are neglecting at our peril what neuroscience has revealed are "right hemisphere" functions (paying attention to our surroundings, empathy, intuition, metaphor, emotional expression, aesthetic decisions and appreciation, and so forth – aspects of the arts that we have no words for because the right hemisphere lacks "propositional" or "rational" language). We have made a world that requires "left hemisphere" skills (analysis, detachment, sequential argument) in order to survive."

 –– Ellen Dissanayake, American author, lecturer, independent scholar 

Source: Melanie Falick. Making a Life: Working by Hand and Discovering the Life You Are Meant to Live. New York: Artisan (a division of Workman Publishing Co., Inc.), 2019; p. 25. 

via: Art Alternatives Knapsack Sketchbook I 2019-2020, 2020, p. 28.

Quotes: Emily Dickinson

"If you take care of the small things, the big things take care of themselves. You can gain more control over your life by paying closer attention to the little things."

–– Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), American poet 

Quotes: Mary Oliver

"To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work."  

–– Mary Oliver (1935-2019), American poet 

Source: Jennifer New. Drawing from Life: The Journal as Art. 2005; Mary Oliver "Yes! No!" from Owls and Other Fantasies 

via: Art Alternatives Knapsack Sketchbook 2017-2018 d, 2018, p. 47.

Quotes: Mary Oliver

"When I walk out into the world, I take no thoughts with me. That's not easy, but you can learn to do it. An empty mind is hungry, so you can look at everything longer and closer. Don't hum! When you listen with empty ears, you hear more. And this is the core of the secret: Attention is the beginning of devotion."

–– Mary Oliver (1935-2019), American poet 

via: Art Alternatives Knapsack Sketchbook 2018 c, p. 48.

Quotes: Epictetus

"You become what you give your attention to." 

–– Epictetus (50-135 A.D.), Greek stoic philosopher 

via: Sketchbook 26, 2022, p. 127.

Quotes: Henry Miller

"The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself." 

–– Henry Miller (1891-1980), American writer 

via: Sketchbook 27, 2015, p. 96. 

Quotes: Adam Zagajewski

"Human life and objects and trees vibrate with mysterious meanings, which can be deciphered like cuneiform writing. There exists a meaning, hidden from day to day, but accessible in moments of greatest attentiveness, in those moments when consciousness loves the world." 

–– Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021), Polish poet, essayist and translator 

Quotes: Eva Hoffman

"...both mind and the psyche require internality. In order to reflect on a problem or build an argument we need to turn mental attention inwards, to mull over ideas and let the mind wander; to sift the important from the trivial; to follow thoughts in their course and consider the disjunctions and connections between them." 

–– Eva Hoffman (b. 1945), Polish-born academic and writer 

Source: Helen Carnac. "Making Time." Studio: Craft and Design in Canada. Fall/Winter 2010, p. 38-42; p. 42. Quote from Eva Hoffman. Time. London: Profile Books, 2009, p. 173. 

via: Sketchbook 17, 2011, p. 9

Quotes: W.H. Auden

"To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention ... on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem ... or the True God ... that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying." 

–– W.H. Auden (1907-1973), British-born American poet 

via Nitch.com

Women's quotes: Robin Wall Kimmerer

"Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart." 

–– Robin Wall Kimmerer (b. 1953), American writer, ecologist, botanist, professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation