Capturing Attention Quotes

The job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at the wall, during the first eight pages.

What writing a poem really does - and what figuring how to perform effectively really does - is forces people to listen to you. It frames your thoughts in such a way that grabs people's attentions and forces them to hear the things that you're actually saying.

Editors are more concerned with the first chapters of a book; that's what everyone reads first in the bookstore or in the online sample.

Writing for children is murder. A chapter has to be boiled down to a paragraph. Every word has to count.

The principle element in a performance is risk, and if you're losing interest then by scaring yourself to death the audience will feel it and boy it'll wake them up.

If we as writers could predict what readers grab on to, we would write it.

You have to emote much more to get what you're trying to get across to come through a quarter inch of latex that's superglued to your face.

If you only have one shot at writing a headline, there's a lot of pressure.

The desire to please is maligned, unfairly. There are many sides to it. First of all, pictures have to arouse interest before people will even look at them, and then they have to show something that holds that interst - and naturally they have to be presentable, just as a song has to be sung well, otherwise people run away. One mustn't underrate this quality, and I have always been delighted when my pieces have also appealed to the museum guards, the laymen.

The ground we have in common with unbelievers is not the Bible, but our common needs, hurts, and interests as human beings. You cannot start with a text expecting the unchurched to be fascinated by it. You must first capture their attention, and then move them to the truth of God's Word. By starting with a topic that interests the unchurched and then showing what the Bible says about it, you can grab their attention, disarm prejudices, and create an interest in the Bible that wasn't there before.

For me, even if I'm singing to a very large audience, like in 'The Sound of Music Live' or in the 'She Loves Me' broadcast, I try to imagine that I am just singing to each individual. It doesn't change my energy other than being perhaps a bit more nervous. I try to sing to each person and right into their individual heart.

What shouldn't you do if you're a young playwright? Don't bore the audience! I mean, even if you have to resort to totally arbitrary killing on stage, or pointless gunfire, at least it'll catch their attention and keep them awake. Just keep the thing going any way you can.

In advertising, you have a small window to say the most you can. That's what songwriting is. The difference is, you get to put the leaves on the trees and colour 'em in.

If you can't find what's unique, people aren't going to listen.

My aim as a frontman is always to try and shrink the venue, if you can, to turn that football stadium into the world's smallest club. At least you have to try.

Attention shifted to him like sunflowers turning to the sun.

You can make a really good one minute trailer out of a really stinky two hour movie.

Whatever's good about your book should be good on page 1, or very few editors are going to get to page 2.

My job is very simply that of a photojournalist. I want to stop people's eye on the page, I want to move the viewer to laughter, to sadness, sometimes to wince - not to impress other photographers.

We expect the listener to have, like, a movie going on when they hear us. That's what it's all about for us.

I meet a person, and in my mind I'm saying three minutes; I give you three minutes to show me the spark.

If people can't relate to something, there's no use of the song being there.

The tools I learned photographing celebrities, now I want to use them to sell ideas.

The really cool thing about festivals is that you're getting to play in front of a whole lot of people who have never heard of us before. That's exciting. At the same time, it's a little bit of a challenge to capture the attention of people who have already seen a lot of bands.