Focus Quotes

“That's the one thing I probably don't like about politics - the focus on the individual. To me, it's more important to get it done, whether I get the credit for it or not.”

“I did some feature work, then tried TV. I was always very aware that the only power that you have is the power of options. If the film industry dries up, then you focus on the TV or the books. For me, it was always about what story do I want to tell next?”

“I just have to take it race by race, focus on what you can do, and the rest is out of your control.”

“If you are one of those people who can’t hold a lot in mind at once—you lose focus and start daydreaming in lectures, and have to get to someplace quiet to focus so you can use your working memory to its maximum—well, welcome to the clan of the creative. Having a somewhat smaller working memory means you can more easily generalize your learning into new, more creative combinations. Because your learning new, more creative combinations. Having a somewhat smaller working memory, which grows from the focusing abilities of the prefrontal cortex, doesn’t lock everything up so tightly, you can more easily get input from other parts of your brain. These other areas, which include the sensory cortex, not only are more in tune with what’s going on in the environment, but also are the source of dreams, not to mention creative ideas. You may have to work harder sometimes (or even much of the time) to understand what’s going on, but once you’ve got something chunked, you can take that chunk and turn it outside in and inside round—putting it through creative paces even you didn’t think you were capable of! Here’s another point to put into your mental chunker: Chess, that bastion of intellectuals, has some elite players with roughly average IQs. These seemingly middling intellects are able to do better than some more intelligent players because they practice more. That’s the key idea. Every chess player, whether average or elite, grows talent by practicing. It is the practice—particularly deliberate practice on the toughest aspects of the material—that can help lift average brains into the realm of those with more “natural” gifts. Just as you can practice lifting weights and get bigger muscles over time, you can also practice certain mental patterns that deepen and enlarge in your mind.”

“My focus is to represent women and change that idea that the only women that can sell is women that are seen by people as beautiful because, to me, every woman is beautiful, every woman is pretty and everybody puts on a show.”

“Make each product the best it can be. Focus on form and materials. What we don't include is as important as what we do include.”

“Focusing on what you don’t want instead of focusing on what do want gets you nowhere. Negativity makes a horrible motivator. Decide what you want and move in that direction.”

“I know if I train hard, focus, I can beat anyone out there.”

“I prayed to a mystery.Sometimes I was simply aware of the mystery. I saw a flash of it during a trip to New York that David and I took before we were married. We were walking on a busy sidewalk in Manhattan. I don't remember if it was day or night. A man with a wound on his forehead came toward us. His damp, ragged hair might have been clotted with blood, or maybe it was only dirt. He wore deeply dirty clothes. His red, swollen hands, cupped in half-fists, swung loosely at his sides. His eyes were focused somewhere past my right shoulder. He staggered while he walked. The sidewalk traffic flowed around him and with him. He was strange and frightening, and at the same time he belonged on the Manhattan sidewalk as much as any of us. It was that paradox -- that he could be both alien and resident, both brutalized and human, that he could stand out in the moving mass of people like a sea monster in a school of tuna and at the same time be as much at home as any of us -- that stayed with me. I never saw him again, but I remember him often, and when I do, I am aware of the mystery.Years later, I was out on our property on the Olympic Peninsula, cutting a path through the woods. This was before our house was built. After chopping through dense salal and hacking off ironwood bushes for an hour or so, I stopped, exhausted. I found myself standing motionless, intensely aware of all of the life around me, the breathing moss, the chattering birds, the living earth. I was as much a part of the woods as any millipede or cedar tree. At that moment, too, I was aware of the mystery.Sometimes I wanted to speak to this mystery directly. Out of habit, I began with "Dear God" and ended with "Amen". But I thought to myself, I'm not praying to that old man in the sky. Rather, I'm praying to this thing I can't define. It was sort of like talking into a foggy valley.Praying into a bank of fog requires alot of effort. I wanted an image to focus on when I prayed. I wanted something to pray *to*. but I couldn't go back to that old man. He was too closely associated with all I'd left behind.”

“All I can focus on is playing as many games as I can at the highest level. If that leads me to the World Cup, then brilliant. It's certainly a target of mine.”

“You've got to realise that your journey is your own and if you're trying to do something just because someone else has done it, it's probably not going to work out. Focus on your own path instead.”

“My faith in Islam is not unlike my faith in the game of basketball: Both require immense determination, focus, passion and discipline.”

“Focus on what you have.”

“Like most people my age, my job is the main focus of my life. I don't have some kind of jet-setting fabulous lifestyle where I'm constantly in situations to acquire amazing anecdotes, that's it.”

“Familiarity is the dagger thrust into the heart of fear.”

“I don't focus on my final result. I focus on my next match and every match is a different story.”

“Success is simply a state of mind.”

“Real change will come when you focus on yourself - not on changing him, Real change comes when you are willing and able to state your claim on what you are and are not willing to live with. Just remember to let him in on it”

“Focus.Such a little word for such a hard thing and yet it can make things so simple, unless you break it. Like glass.Fragile on certain points with enough pressure ore carelessness, but if handled correctly, it’s useful, clear, sharp, and perfect.That’s what I will try to think about, whenever the Beast in me is not in agreement with what I am doing, or how I am behaving, when it threatens to break free, through that very same glass that separates us.I need to be exactly like this window: smooth, cool, strong, and impenetrable.Focus.”

“It was better for me when I was joined at the court by a second woman. When I was there alone, there was too much media focus on the one woman, and the minute we got another woman, that changed.”