Focus Quotes - Page 32

• There are often references to childhood, but they're rarely the focus of the [my] novels.

  Paul Auster

  Childhood, Novel

  Interview with Nathalie Cochoy and Sophie Vallas for Transatlantica, transatlantica.revues.org. March 2014.

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• I realise I'll have to acquire the ability to speak to my audience in between numbers. I've never had to do that. On the street I only focus on the keyboard settings for my next song, which takes a bit of time and a lot of concentration. So I'll have to develop that new skill, which gives me pause, because I'm afraid I'll say something stupid and disillusion people when they realise I'm an ordinary earthling - in fact, as ordinary as anyone else on this planet.

  Susan Schneider

  Song, Stupid, Skills

  Source: thequietus.com

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• Working with devices and guitar pedals and mixers and synthesizers is what I do, and I prefer people not focus on that because it's kind of distracting from what the point should be. At least for me, it's to have the primacy of aurality in the experience of that evening.

  Tim Hecker

  Guitar, People, Evening

  Source: thequietus.com

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• It's easy to focus on the differences, harder to find the similarities in people.

  Chali 2na

  Differences, People, Easy

  Source: www.hiphopcanada.com

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• The beliefs of Native people are no less powerful or important just because they focus on a different "form of magic."

  Joseph Boyden

  Powerful, People, Magic

  Source: therumpus.net

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• In America, where writers are preoccupied with the craft of writing, I always try to introduce this concept of the badly written good story. Turning the hierarchy around and putting passion on top and not craft, because when you just focus on craft, you can write something that is very sterile.

  Etgar Keret

  Passion, Writing, America

  "Etgar Keret: We Can Try to Be Human". Interview with Meakin Armstrong, www.guernicamag.com. August 17, 2015.

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• The origins of these [schooling] federal policies were tied to President Johnson's war on poverty. Supplemental funds were sent to school districts serving poor children to compensate for issues related to poverty. Since the enactment of NCLB, the focus on mitigating poverty has been replaced by a focus on accountability as measured by test scores.

  Pedro Noguera

  Children, War, School

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• You don't see a positive culture, stability among teachers, or leadership. We don't focus enough in our policies on creating conditions to educating kids with the greatest needs. There is no state that does that.

  Pedro Noguera

  Teacher, Kids, Creating

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Addicts have incredible energy, it's just all directed toward one goal. But what incredible luck and grace addicts have. You hear about it all the time, getting into some kind of crazy situation in order to get drugs or to get money for drugs, pulling off something where they fall from a building and land on a truck full of pillows. It's incredible will, and if you learn to focus that will on getting better instead of getting worse it's amazing what you can do with that. You can use that strength and resourcefulness for something real instead of scoring dope in a desert.

  Bucky Sinister

  Crazy, Real, Fall

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Environmentally, business in America in 1970 was very similar to business in China today. Even if a CEO wanted to be a responsible corporate citizen, he (and they were all "he's" then) simply couldn't invest a billion dollars in pollution controls to produce a product that was indistinguishable from those of his competitors. His products would be priced out of the market. Passing laws that created a clean, level playing field for whole industries had to be a core focus of the 1970s.

  Denis Hayes

  Law, Pollution Control, America

  "The Rumpus Interview with Earth Day organiser Denis Hayes". Interview with Melissa Price, therumpus.net. April 22, 2009.

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• Yoga has stopped me from destroying my joints after running. It slows me down. My brain and body can go into overdrive - yoga teaches me to focus on the moment and not get ahead of myself.

  Julia Stiles

  Running, Yoga, Brain

  Interview with Laura Dawn, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• A half-hour before bedtime, I remind myself that I now deserve to prepare myself for a good night's sleep. You can't focus on your work if you're sleep-deprived even if you have a fascinating job.

  Marty Nemko

  Good Night, Jobs, Sleep

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• I think we definitely want to focus on the simplicity aspect because it's something that's built into the culture even here at Twitter. Constraints inspire creativity.

  Biz Stone

  Creativity, Thinking, Simplicity

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I mean just look at haiku, the idea of it. We want to focus on that singularity, on that simplicity, but we still want to add features and add value, but we want to do it in a way that fits in with that mentality of simplicity. You have to spend a lot of time thinking about it.

  Biz Stone

  Mean, Thinking, Ideas

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I want my songs to be heard by everyone. I want [everyone] to treat people with compassion. I want them to realize that we are all so similar, but we focus so much on our differences.

  Joshua Radin

  Song, Compassion, Differences

  "Joshua Radin, Singer-Songwriter: So Much To Say, So Much To Love". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com. January 27, 2015.

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• I think that the history of rock could be recycled in a different way and brought back into focus without the luggage that comes along with it.

  David Bowie

  Thinking, Rocks, Different

  Source: www.npr.org

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• We've always defined conflict fairly broadly from ideological conflict to troops on the ground. For quite some time we've talked about a focus on Palestine. Certainly no one can deny that Israel is conflict with Palestine and no one can deny that the U.S. is the largest supporter of Israel internationally - not only financially, but also in the United Nations where the United States is one of the very few countries that does not recognize Palestine as a state.

  Jon Rubin

  Country, Israel, United States

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I focus on faculty, as opposed to facilities, budgets, endowments or students. I do so because I believe, based on many decades of work as a teacher, a scholar and an administrator, that the quality of the faculty determines the quality of the university. Everything else flows from the quality of the faculty. If the faculty are good, you will attract good students and you will have alumni who will raise funds for you.

  Henry Rosovsky

  Teacher, Believe, Quality

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• I think people felt like they did everything they had been told they should do to fix the problem, and it still wasn't fixed. Then you have these other parts of Sudan, [which] in actual fact have been left on the back burner for way too long, so there was this scramble, probably a year ago now, to focus on the fact that this peace agreement was basically falling apart.

  Rebecca Hamilton

  Fall, Thinking, Agreement

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Our focus is not on current politics, but students seem to be naturally drawn to this topic. This is understandable, when the U.S. is constantly trying to terrorize the nation with threats of war, students obviously take notice.

  Mohammad Marandi

  War, Trying, Topics

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• An information operations team was sent to Afghanistan to conduct various psychological operations on the Afghans and Taliban. The team was then asked not to focus on the Taliban but on manipulating senators into giving more funds and troops [to the war].

  Michael Hastings

  War, Team, Giving

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• That is a horrible thing in a way, but it is the one thing poets can bring back to experience, this intense focus on language, which activates words as a portal back into experience. It's a mysterious process that's very hard to articulate, because it's focused entirely on the material of language in a way, but in the interests not just of language itself whatever that would mean - that's the mistake, by the way, that so many so-called "experimental" poets make - but in service to human experience.

  Matthew Zapruder

  Mistake, Mean, Way

  Source: therumpus.net

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• If you merely focus on what we already know, then it's not revelatory. You may as well just go and watch a documentary or a few videos on Youtube, and you're good.

  David Oyelowo

  Watches, Video, May

  Source: aalbc.com

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• There's this moment sometimes, when you do a crossword puzzle and you have the one really long word. And once you get that, the whole thing kind of comes into focus. Sometimes it's just working things over in your mind and then finding that one line that kind of ties the song together, and now it works. It's a puzzle of sorts.

  Craig Finn

  Song, Ties, Long

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I do less of that stuff now because I figured out that when I was writing things I didn't care about, it made me angry and depressed, so I turned my focus to what does make me happy, and also I recognized that one of the things that gives me great happiness is teaching creative writing, and so I could write profiles of professional golfers or I could be a professor. Being a professor made me much happier.

  Tod Goldberg

  Teaching, Writing, Giving

  Source: therumpus.net

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