Decius:

Noticing is easier in a foreign place because mundane things are unusual. It's the sameness of the familiar that closes minds.

Michael Lopp:

As quickly as possible, your brain wants a framework that efficiently predicts what is going to happen next. Your initial framework is a calming hodgepodge of past experience combined with your three most recent epiphanies ...

Danny Bradbury:

When you walk into your room for the hundredth time, you're not really looking at your wallpaper. Instead, your brain is painting a picture of it for you from memory.

Nick Paumgarten:

If you're the type to count the steps you take each morning on the trek from apartment to subway platform (third I-beam in, rear car), and then on to lobby and desk, you find that the number hardly varies. After a while, you stop looking around.

Arika Okrent:

The ginger in gingerly is not related to the spice identified by the genus Zingiber but to Old French gensor, which is related to gent, as in "well-born." It referred to small, elegant steps, like those a gentleman would make.

David Foster Wallace:

Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you've never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it's like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.

Jan Chipchase:

Every object we leave behind is one less predetermined outcome. If you want your heart to leap at the possibility of what the journey can hold, park the wheels, pack less, and enjoy every ounce of weight.