Quotes & Sayings About Paying Attention To Her

She was in a free fall now. And it wasn't killing her. In fact, she was beginning to wonder if she might've had it backwards. All that fixating on the fall...maybe she should've been paying more attention to the free. — Gayle Forman

Sometimes Holly seemed like she wasn't paying attention, and other times she was gone when I went looking for her. That was when she went to a part of heaven we didn't share. I missed her then, but it was and odd sort of missing because by then I knew the meaning of forever.
I could not have what I wanted most: Mr. Harvey dead and me living. Heaven wasn't perfect. But I came to believe that if I watched closely, and desired, I might change the lives of those I loved on Earth. — Alice Sebold

Quang Trung explained to Hoa that he called his band Love Like Hate because that was how he felt about Vietnam. "I love Vietnam so much I hate her. How can I not hate her when I love her so much? I am like a son who froths at the mouth because he has to watch his mother sell her pussy. She's sold her pussy to the Chinese, French, Russians and Americans, and now she's selling it to the Taiwanese. She'd sell her pussy to anyone because she feels inferior to everyone. She's thrilled to be humiliated because someone is paying attention to her. And when she's too old to sell her own pussy, she sells her daughter's pussy. That's Mother Vietnam for you! — Linh Dinh

The ride through the ancient walled town of Maienfeld, past vineyards and gently rolling fields and then up, up to where the snow still lay deep in the purple shadows underneath the fir trees, was an experience which called for silence. Glancing back, Heidi saw that Marta was no longer paying any attention to the chickens. She had lifted her face to the glorious mountains with their glistening peaks and awe-inspiring glaciers. Of what was she thinking? Did they thrill this little stranger as they had always thrilled her? Would she, too, learn to love them? — Charles Tritten

Another thought abruptly occurred to her. "You promised me some ex-girlfriends at the Everglades Club, and Patty showed up. So how many of those actresses and models you've left strewn in your wake will be around?"
His jaw twitched. "Some, probably. They can't resist seeing me in my polo uniform. But how many former girlfriends must one have before they can said to be strewn?"
"The exact number that you have," she retorted. She'd seen photos of him with them, on the Internet, in every national rag, and even the more reputable magazines. And she knew there'd only been maybe half a dozen of them, though with the intensive coverage, the numbers seemed much higher than that.
"Don't worry, love. I won't be paying attention to anyone but you, busily trapping thieves and killers and strewing them in your wake."
"Yeah, and don't you forget that. — Suzanne Enoch

Violet tried the door latch. Locked, of course. Wordlessly, she pulled a hairpin from her wind-mussed chignon and handed it to him. He stared at it. "What makes you think I know how to pick locks?" he whispered. "Just because I'm a spy?" "No. Because you were forever stealing pocket money from your father's top desk drawer." Bloody hell. She truly had been paying attention. — Tessa Dare

When a teacher is paying extra attention to your child, you believe that it's because you raised such an exceptional kid, one that stands out head and shoulders above the rest of her booger-eating friends. — Drew Magary

I could hear her babbling away beside me, but I wasn't really paying attention. I could barely focus on anything. My nerve endings seemed to have come alive; they almost jangled with anticipation I was going to see Will. Whatever else, I had that. I could almost feel the miles between us shrinking, as if we were at two ends of some invisible elastic thread. — Jojo Moyes

Edward didn't know what he was thinking, asking her about marriage. He wasn't a damned viscount. He refused to be one. And whatever odd flutterings he may have felt in her presence, whatever odd imaginings he had harbored, he wasn't going to marry her.
And yet ... It was tempting, too. While he hadn't been paying attention, his mind had constructed a might-have-been, a world where he'd never been cast out, where he'd never had to make his heart as black and hard as coal. If he'd been Edward Delacey, he might have courted her in his own right. Edward Delacey, dead fool that he was, could have had the one thing that Edward Clark never would. — Courtney Milan

He was saved from having to reply by Philippa, turning to face them. "What on earth? Do you see this?"
He had not been paying attention, but Olivia was now alternately pantomiming cracking a whip, and screwing up her face, eyes tightly closed, teeth bared, with her fingers splayed out at either edge of her mouth.
"Driving a squid! Whipping the sunshine!" the marchioness called out, pride in her tone, drawing laughter from the rest of the room.
"Driving a Squid is a play I would dearly love to read," Philippa said on a giggle, turning back to Penelope. "Penny, really. We could use your help. — Sarah MacLean

There was no reason to think she would survive this. So she was surprised to notice that she was happy. Not the powerful, irrational, and dangerous joy of a euphoric attack, but a kind of pleasure and release all the same. At first, she thought it was because there wasn't anyone there with her, guarding her, judging her. And that, she decided, was part of it. But more than that, she was simply doing what needed to be done without having to concern herself about what anyone else thought. Even Jim. And wasn't that odd? She wanted nothing in the world more than for Jim to be there - followed by Amos and Alex and a good meal and a bed at a humane gravity - but there was a part of her that was also expanding into the silence of simply being herself and utterly alone. There were no dark thoughts, no guilt, no self-doubt tapping at the back of her mind. Either she was too tired for that, or something else had happened to her while she'd been paying attention to other things. — James S.A. Corey

Dialectics is the philosophy of opposites."
I thought about this. "How do you make a philosophy out of opposites?"
"Well, you know how people are. They like to see things in black and white? Up or down, male or female?"
She had my attention now. "Uh-huh."
"Well, dialectics says that's all bullshit. That life is not about opposites, but about finding the balance between all these extremes."
I tried to sound less interested than I actually was. "How do you do that?" I said. "Find balance, I mean?"
"By paying attention," she said. "By trying to see how everything also contains its opposite." She took a drag on her cigarette. "Because if you live your life at the extremes, you go nuts. If you want to make any sense out of the world, you have to live in the gray."
"That sounds hard," I said.
"The hell yes it's hard," she said. "People don't like gray. It makes people uncomfortable. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

Nikhilananda's birthday. Maybe we'd Morris dance, naked, around the base of an old-growth California redwood, its branches lavishly festooned with the soiled hammocks and poop buckets of crunchy-granola tree sitters mentoring spotted owls in passive-resistance protest techniques. You get the picture. In place of Santa Claus, my mom and dad said Maya Angelou kept tabs on whether little children were naughty or nice. Dr. Angelou, they warned me, did her accounting on a long hemp scroll of names, and if I failed to turn my compost I'd be sent to bed with no algae. Me, I just wanted to know that someone wise and carbon neutral - Dr. Maya or Shirley Chisholm or Sean Penn - was paying attention. But none of that was really Christmas. And none of that Earth First! baloney helps out once you're dead and you discover that the snake-handling, — Chuck Palahniuk

Volyova felt as if her brain consisted of a room full of precocious schoolchildren: individually bright, and - if only they would pool themselves - capable of shattering insights. But some of those schoolchildren were not paying attention; they were staring dreamily out of the window, ignoring her protestations to focus on the present, because they found their own obsessions more intellectually attractive than the dull curriculum she was intent on dispensing. — Alastair Reynolds

And then she poked him again. Not because he wasn't paying attention but because when she did it the first time she found she liked it. Mrs. Bunny might think she was getting away with this, but Mr. Bunny was silently counting the pokes to pay her back later. — Polly Horvath

Listen to Your Lover (Or Babe, Sweetie Cakes, Hot Rod, Honey, Dancing Queen, Dairy Queen, etc.)
If she tells you she likes it when you bite her neck - do it! It doesn't matter where she learned that she likes it or why she does, just be thankful you got the tip. Girls don't always express what they want, so when she does say it, you really want to make sure you are paying attention. Also, learn her language (unless it is Mandarin, because that shit is impossible). If you start pulling her hair and she starts moaning, that's her way of saying, "Ohmygod, please do this more, and by more I mean all the time." And the more you please her, the more she'll want to do it with you. It's a win-win! — Olivia Munn

Stupid me, I thought he just wanted to see how we were," she said, but I wasn't paying attention to her. "What's your problem?" she asked.
"All this time I've complained about coming from a broken home, when in reality, I was just a part of a dysfunctional family," I said disappointedly.
"Don't worry," Mom said. "You're still a bastard."
I shrugged. I suppose she was right. — Chris Colfer

When the second act was over Countess Bezukhova rose, turned to the Rostovs' box - her whole bosom completely exposed - beckoned the old count with a gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had entered her box, began talking to him with an amiable smile. — Leo Tolstoy

Whereas some people's attitude suggested that perhaps they knew something you didn't, Mrs. Whiting's implied that she knew everything you didn't. She alone had been paying attention, so it was her duty to bring you at least partially up to speed. — Richard Russo

We've all seen the mom who devotes all her time and attention to her child and is so hungry for adult interaction that as soon as she's around another adult, she's not paying attention anymore. — Cynthia Nixon

Good old traditional audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that the person on the other end was paying complete attention to you while also permitting you not to have to pay anything even close to complete attention to her. — David Foster Wallace

For her next birthday she'd asked for a telescope. Her mother had been alive then, and had suggested a pony, but her father had laughed and bought her a beautiful telescope, saying: "Of course she should watch the stars! Any girl who cannot identify the constellation of Orion just isn't paying attention!" And when she started asking him complicated questions, he took her along to lectures at the Royal Society, where it turned out that a nine-year-old girl who had blond hair and knew what the precession of the equinoxes was could ask hugely bearded famous scientists anything she liked. Who'd want a pony when you could have the whole universe? — Terry Pratchett

soon as he finished up here, he intended to ride out and pick a big bundle of those purple flowers, tie their stems together with a length of yellow ribbon he'd purchased a month ago because the color had reminded him of Sadie's shining hair, and he'd hand 'em right over in front of everybody tonight when she finished her final song. His heart set up a double beat just thinking about how she'd blush pink and give him her special smile. Then, while she was smiling and feeling appreciative, he'd take her aside and set her straight on how he felt about her and how much her paying attention to the sheriff hurt him. He and Sadie had a relationship years in the making. She'd only known the sheriff a few weeks. She'd pick him over McKane. He just knew it. — Kim Vogel Sawyer

The trail gets a might steep through here. I'd advise you to start paying attention instead of daydreaming about your beau."
His tone annoyed her and she couldn't resist answering in kind.
"What's the matter, Mr. Langley, afraid I'll fall off a cliff, and you won't be able to collect your reward? That is what your after,isn't it? The reward. Just like in the posters:Wanted dead or alive,Julia Ashton,for unspeakable crimes of the heart. — Kat Martin

Sure, some news is bigger news than other news. War is bigger news than a girl having mixed feelings about the way some guy fucked her and didn't call. But I don't believe in a finite economy of empathy; I happen to think that paying attention yields as much as it taxes. — Leslie Jamison

When I sit and talk with a person, I'm not always paying attention. I'm looking at the person and saying, 'What is it about his or her life that appeals to me?' — Patricia Reilly Giff

Is your head bothering you?" Louisa asked. But she wasn't paying much attention. Frederick, her ridiculously fat basset hounds, had spotted a fellow canine in the distance and was yanking on the lead. "Frederick!" she yelped, tripping on a step or two before she found her footing.
Frederick stopped, althought it wasn't clear if it was due to Louisa's hold on the lead or outright exhaustion. He let out a hugh sigh, and frankly, Annabel was suprised that he didn't collapse on the ground.
"I think someone has been sneaking him sausages again," Louisa grumbled.
Annabel looked elsewhere.
"Annabel!"
"He looked so HUNGERY," Annabel insisted.
Louisa motioned toward her dog, whos belly slid along the grass. "THAT looks hungery?"
"His eyes looked hungery. — Julia Quinn

I wasn't paying attention," said Myrtle dramatically. "Peeves upset me so much I came in here and tried to kill myself. Then, of course, I remembered that I'm
that I'm
" "Already dead," said Ron hopefully. Myrtle gave a tragic sob, rose up in the air, turned over, and dived headfirst into the toilet, splashing water all over them and vanishing from sight, although from the direction of her muffled sobs, she had come to rest somewhere in the U-bend. — J.K. Rowling

He liked playing his music for her. She listened. When he played her something that sucked, she
said so. Well, in a nice way, Theo thought. That kind of thing told him she was paying attention, real
attention.
Their mother never had. To much of anything.
I'm not good with the word part. I just like doing the melody. — Nora Roberts

She's the kind of person you want to like you. You know she can be cruel; you've seen her be cruel. But when her eyes are on you, and she's paying attention to you, you want it to last. Her beauty is part of it, but there's something more
something that draws you in. I think it's her transparency
everything she thinks or feels is written all over her face, and even if it wasn't, she'd say it anyway, because she says what she thinks, without thinking first. — Jenny Han

In my opinion, kids need their parents more in their teens than when they were younger, and that's exactly the time parents think their jobs are done and stop paying close attention. A ten-year-old has more common sense than four sixteen-year-olds put together. Hormones begin shooting every which way, and teenaged nervous systems malfunction, causing them to lose their reasoning abilities. "Oh, I don't know," she said, hesitantly. "I'd rather not. I'm a little busy." I bet. I decided to play my hunch. "If you don't answer my questions, I'll have to find your parents and tell them." I managed a clear tone of implied threat and leaned to the left so I could stare behind her. "You wouldn't like that, would you? — Deb Baker

He spent two years running a hospital for Chai." Molly put her arm around the younger woman. "Which was the equivalent of working the ER in a city like New York or Chicago. He saved a lot of lives." She made sure Max was paying attention, too. "And before you say, 'Yeah, of drug runners, killers, and thieves,' you should also know that his patients were just regular people who worked for Chai because he was the only steady employer in the area. Or because they knew they'd end up in some mass grave if they refused his offer of employment. Before Grady came in, if they were injured in some battle with a rival gang, they were just left for dead."
Jones looked up to find Max watching him as he sterilized a particularly sharp knife. "Me and Jesus," he said. "So much alike, people often get us confused. — Suzanne Brockmann

Exactly. These guys just want me to play Snow White singing in her little cottage while they do all the work.'
Lucy snorted. 'Snow White and the Seven Buttheads. You could give Disney a run for their money.'
Nicholas poked her in the ribs. 'I am not a singing dwarf!'
'No, you're a butthead. Weren't you paying attention? — Alyxandra Harvey

We're not paying attention to the fact that Hillary Clinton is running in 2006. Everyone is looking to her for the future. It's the same with anybody else who's positioning themselves. — Gwen Ifill

[Jules] slides into a seat beside me with her hot lunch tray, sighing. "Four hours, thirty-six minutes, and twelve seconds till we're out of purgatory for the weekend."
"Maybe later," I murmur, still distracted by the day's previous events.
"So, let me show you how a conversation works. I say something, and then you say something back that actually relates to what I was talking about, as if you were even the least bit interested."
"Huh?" I say. — Jodi Picoult

If we are looking for some specific, expected danger, we are less likely to see the unexpected danger. I urge that she pay relaxed attention to her environment rather than paying rapt attention to her imagination. — Gavin De Becker

"Chloe isn't flirting with that guy," Simon said.
"Course not."
"I mean it. She's - "
I glanced back at him. "I'm not blind. She's only paying enough attention to him to be polite. He's the one flirting, which is bugging her and that's why I'm pissed off. She's trying to eat her fries and he's interrupting."
Simon chuckled. — Kelley Armstrong

Last night, I thought we were going to begin."
"Begin what?"
She let out a soft sigh and said, "You know, begin"
His voice held a smile when he replied, "We did, Abby. Couldn't you tell?"
She pulled his pillow to her chest and whispered, "Not really."
"Then you weren't paying much attention" he muttered. — Kristen Ashley

Staring at her face, she began to fancy her outer layer had begun to melt away while she wasn't paying attention, and something
some new skeleton
was emerging from beneath the softness of her accustomed self. With a deep, visceral ache, she wished her true form might prove to be a sleek and shining one, like a stiletto blade slicing free of an ungainly sheath. Like a bird of prey losing its hatchling fluff to hunt in cold, magnificent skies. That she might become something glittering, something startling, something dangerous. — Laini Taylor

You're not paying attention to me, are you?"
"Eh? What's that? Sorry, love, I didn't hear you. Wasn't paying attention. I had my eyes on your perfectly formed arse."
Catherine fixed him with a glare worthy of a Scottish schoolmaster. "This is serious business Jamie. If you've to pass for a Highlander, you've got to get the kilt just so,"
"Bah! You're a hoydenish vixen. You just want to ogle my knees."
"Nonsense. I'm sure you'll find the ah... freedom and... utility very appealing once you try it on."
"You mean you think I'll like the feel of the family jewels waving free?" Blushing, she spread both great kilts on the ground. "One lays down on it like so. Oh stop grinning, Jamie, and do try."
She was so earnest and eager in her lesson that he hadn't the heart to tell her he'd worn a kilt a time or two before. — Judith James

He picked up her gun. Pointed it at her. Pulled the trigger.
Isabet jumped like a startled lizard.
He handed the gun back to her. 'First tip. Get a new gun. As soon as a Ras Tiegan gun gets sand in it, it's useless. They don't work out here.'
Isabet's hand was trembling as she took the gun back. 'You seemed very certain of that.'
'Nyx unloaded it while we were arguing,' he said. 'If you want to keep up, you'll need to start paying attention. — Kameron Hurley

Alessandra approached the geniuses of the past to give them life with her attention, which was the form her affection took: paying attention. — Carlos Fuentes

I stopped paying attention to her. I stopped doing the things that someone does for the person he loves. Because I was tired. Because other things always seemed to matter a little bit more." He — Laura Dave

Although she failed to grasp the meaning of this speech, she did understand that it might belong to the category of 'scoldings' and scenes of reproach or supplication, and her familiarity with men enabled her, without paying attention to the details of what they said, to conclude that they would not makes such scenes if they were not in love, that since they were in love it was pointless to obey them, they they would be only more in love afterward. — Marcel Proust

All sens of purpose, of responsibility, indeed of any imaginable future, were removed from her by the deaths of her husband and child. It was they who used to make her life a story, they who seemed to be giving it a beginning, a middle and an end. Nowadays, her life is more like a newspaper: aimless, up-to-date, full of meaningless events for Colonel Leek to recite when no one's paying attention. For all the use she is to Society, beyond intercepting the odd squirt of sperm that would otherwise have troubled a respectable wife, she might as well be dead. Yet, she exists, and, against the odds, she is happy. — Michel Faber

Buttering a roll, my dad says, "I like Peter."
"You do?" I say.
Daddy nods. "He's a good kid. He's really taken with you, Lara Jean."
"Taken with me?" I repeat.
To me Kitty says, "You sound like a parrot."
To Daddy she says, "What does that mean? Taken by her?"
"It means he's charmed by her," Daddy explains. "He's smitten."
"Well, what's smitten?" He chuckles and stuffs the roll in Kitty's open, perplexed mouth. "It means he likes her."
"He definitely likes her," Kitty agrees, her mouth full. "He ... he looks at you a lot, Lara Jean. When you're not paying attention. He looks at you, to see if you're having a good time."
"He does?" My chest feels warm and glowy, and I can feel myself start to smile. — Jenny Han

Yeah, well," I say, "I left Abnegation because I wasn't selfless enough, no matter how hard I tried to be."
"That's not entirely true." He smiles at me. "That girl who let someone throw knives at her to spare a friend, who hit my dad with a belt to protect me-that selfless girl, that's not you?" ...
"You've been paying close attention, haven't you?"
"I like to observe people/"
"Maybe you were cut out for Candor, Four, because you're a terrible liar. — Veronica Roth

If you're paying attention, if your eyes and your ears and your mind are open, as they should be open. You can know and then, critically, hold on to that knowledge, even if he loves you (or seems to), even if he chooses you (or seems to), even if he promises to make you happy (which no one, not one person on the planet, can possibly do). And part of her, a big part of her, had obviously wanted to be the one who told them this. Because I am such a competent — Jean Hanff Korelitz

You never laugh," she said. "You behave as if everything is funny to you, but you never laugh. Sometimes you smile when you think no one is paying attention."
For a moment he was silent. Then, "You," he said, half reluctantly. "You make me laugh. From the moment you hit me with that bottle."
"It was a jug," she said automatically.
His lips quirked up at the corners. "Not to mention the way you always correct me. With that funny look on your face when you do it. And the way you shouted at Gabriel Lightwood. And even the way you talked back to de Quincey. You make me ... " He broke off, looking at her, and she wondered if she looked the way she felt - stunned and breathless. — Cassandra Clare