Sherry Turkle

“We go from curiosity to a search for communion.”

“What I'm seeing is a generation that says consistently, 'I would rather text than make a telephone call.' Why? It's less risky. I can just get the information out there. I don't have to get all involved; it's more efficient. I would rather text than see somebody face to face.”

“I think computers are the ultimate writing tool. I'm a very slow writer, so I appreciate it every day.”

“A sacred space is not a place to hide out. It is a place where we recognize ourselves and our commitments.”

“Overstimulated, we seek out constrained worlds.”

“To understand desire, one needs language and flesh.”

“I think few people of education enter politics because it seems like a contact blood sport.”

“The selfie makes us accustomed to putting ourselves and those around us 'on pause' in order to document our lives. It is an extension of how we have learned to put our conversations 'on pause' when we send or receive a text, an image, an email, a call.”

“Underestimation has its uses.”

“If you're having a conversation with someone in speech, and it's not being tape-recorded, you can change your opinion, but on the Internet, it's not like that. On the Internet it's almost as if everything you say were being tape-recorded. You can't say, "I changed my mind.”

“It is painful to watch children trying to show off for parents who are engrossed in their cell phones. Children are nostalgic for the 'good old days' when parents used to read to them without the cell phone by their side or watch football games or Disney movies without having the BlackBerry handy.”

“We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.”

“I think that we live in techno-enthusiastic times. We celebrate our technologies because people are frightened by the world we've made.”

“Technology challenges us to assert our human values, which means that first of all, we have to figure out what they are.”

“We think constant connection will make us feel less lonely. The opposite is true.”

“Online life is practice to make the rest of life better, but it is also a pleasure in itself.”

“Children make theories when they are confused or anxious.”

“Laboratory research suggests that how we look and act in the virtual affect our behavior in the real.”

“If you're constantly stimulated by being called away to the buzzing and the excitement of what's on your phone, solitude seems kind of scary.”

“A good therapy helps you develop a sense of irony about your life so that when you start to repeat old and unhelpful patterns, something within you says, "There you go again; let's call this to a halt. You can do something different." Often the first step toward doing something different is developing the capacity to not act, to stay still and reflect.”