29 Quotes by Winifred Gallagher

Yet he argued that even a tedious topic can take on a certain fascination if you make an effort to look at it afresh: "The subject must be made to show new aspects of itself; to prompt new questions; in a word, to change. From an unchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders away.

Arguably the mos intriguing characteristic assessed by the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ), a widely used test developed by the University of Minnesota's eminent psychologist Auke Tellegen, is "absorption," which describes a particular style of focusing. If you get a high score in this trait, you're naturally inclined toward what he calls a "respondent" or "experiential" way of focusing.

Research shows that when they confront a potentially unpleasant situation, such as some unfriendly faces at a gathering, these extraverts are apt to shift their attention rapidly around the room and zero in on amiable or neutral visages, thus short-circuiting the distressing images before they can get stored in memory.

this observation leads Rozin to a stunning conclusion: "Disgust is the basic emotion of civilization.

Once out of your cradle, you don't focus on the world in the abstract, perceiving things for the first time, but in synchrony with your accumulated knowledge, which enriches and helps define your experience, as well as ensuring its uniqueness.

...In Jack Nasar's research on American's taste in homes, only one group preferred the modernist house: architects.

She doesn't necessarily go with anything in the room, but she speaks to me. My friends from Tibet gave this to me just before I got a breast cancer diagnosis when I was writing the book.

We need to think about our homes from a behavioral perspective.

It was very distinctive, almost like a little castle. There were all sorts of great nooks and crannies, and lots of doors and patios and prospects.