attention

His feeling of disappointment that accompanies this action has nothing to do with the contents of the safe. He is disappointed because he has solved the problem, and has gone back to the baseline state of boredom and low-level irritation that always comes over him when he's not doing something that inherently needs to be done, like picking a lock or breaking a code.

The shortest distance between two points is a time line, a schedule, a map of your time, the itinerary for the rest of your life. Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.

"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,"

boredom is a mask that frustration wears).

Boredom is a mask that frustration wears.

I tried to sit in a position where there wasn't a speely directly in front of me. Still, every time the feed popped from one image to another, my eye jumped to it. I was like an ape in a tree, looking at whatever moved fastest in my environment.

I was worrying again. Actually, it was worse than that—even more pointless. Rather than worrying about the future—which could be changed—I was worrying about things that might have gone wrong in the past, and couldn't be changed in any case.

In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought."

Above all, it taught him how to listen, to listen with a silent heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinion.

ESTRAGON: In the meantime let us try and converse calmly, since we are incapable of keeping silent. VLADIMIR: You're right, we're inexhaustible. ESTRAGON: It's so we won't think. VLADIMIR: We have that excuse. ESTRAGON: It's so we won't hear. VLADIMIR: We have our reasons. ESTRAGON: All the dead voices. VLADIMIR: They make a noise like wings.

The sugar high of convenience is fleeting and the sting of missing out dulls rapidly, but the meaningful glow that comes from taking charge of what claims your time and attention is something that persists.

compulsive phone use papers over a void created by a lack of a well-developed leisure life.

"Alas! I already feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so."