To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it's because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that's where phrases like 'deadly dull' or 'excruciatingly dull' come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that's dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient, low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention. Admittedly, the whole thing's pretty confusing, and hard to talk about abstractly?but surely something must lie behind not just Muzak in dull or tedious places any more but now also actual TV in waiting rooms, supermarkets' checkouts, airport gates, SUVs' backseats. Walkman, iPods, BlackBerries, cell phones that attach to your head. This terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I can't think anyone really believes that today's so-called 'information society' is just about information. Everyone knows it's about something else, way down.

Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Most people are slow to champion love because they fear the transformation it brings into their lives. And make no mistake about it: love does take over and transform the schemes and operations of our egos in a very mighty way.

It seems to me now that the plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone; you don't need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity. You just have to love someone.

Aside from the obvious, Francesca, what do you want in return for supplying information?" Bones asked, getting back to the subject. "You to take me," she replied at once. "Not gonna happen!" I spat, squeezing him possessively. Three sets of widened eyes fixed on me. That's when I realized that what I had a firm grip on was no longer his hand.

Transformation is my favorite game and in my experience, anger and frustration are the result of you not being authentic somewhere in your life or with someone in your life. Being fake about anything creates a block inside of you. Life can't work for you if you don't show up as you.

Let us begin this letter, this prelude to an encounter, formally, as a declaration, in the old-fashioned way: I love you. You do not know me (although you have seen me, smiled at me). I know you (although not so well as I would like. I want to be there when your eyes flutter open in the morning, and you see me, and you smile. Surely this would be paradise enough?). So I do declare myself to you now, with pen set to paper. I declare it again: I love you.

Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough.

The upheavals of adolescence silenced 'A Christmas Carol' for a few years. I became a firebrand atheist. Christmas - humbug! Too commercial! Then I became an agnostic. Christmas was a pro-forma affair basically a chore. Buy mother a book dad a new tie my brother and sister small gifts. Pretend thanks for the fountain pens and shirts I received.

To me as long as we've known each other I've always thought Mick's most brilliant thing was that he could work in an area two foot square and give a very exciting performance.

The United States strongly condemns the illegal disclosure of classified information. It puts people's lives in danger threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems.

There's always a miasma of misinformation emerging from the higher education sector as to which are the 'best' courses to take. My advice would always be to ignore the perceived wisdom and look for the most reliable evidence on the ground.

It is much more difficult to measure nonperformance than performance.

All the information you could want is constantly streaming at you like a runaway truck - books newspaper stories Web sites apps how-to videos this article you're reading even entire magazines devoted to single subjects like charcuterie or wedding cakes or pickles.

I've never crashed a wedding. When I was a kid I of course used to crash parties. Crashing a wedding is difficult though because you have to have the suit and you have to have information in case someone catches you. You have to know at least some names and something.

The lowest form of popular culture - lack of information misinformation disinformation and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people's lives - has overrun real journalism. Today ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.

I was telling somebody just the other day there's technically such a hierarchy in this business. You have film that's the ideal then you have TV and things like web series do not claim as much cred but the fact is if the material is solid and I believe and trust in the team that's involved I don't care what format it is.

If you are a reliable honest journalist sources will open up and trust you and share good information.

As a historian what I trust is my ability to take a mass of information and tell a story shaped around it.

Well the whole story is in the book but the short answer is that I was the first information architect in an organization that was traditionally design-oriented and I felt I needed a tool to help me gain the trust and support of my colleagues.

A more important reason is that the bands will intuitively trust someone they think is a peer and who speaks fondly of the same formative rock and roll experiences.

That's how you get a performance - they put trust in you.

I worked with creative people who were very demanding of me and they helped me reach performances that I never could have gotten on my own without being pushed and having trust in them. And so I know the best way to get the best performance of an actor and that's not to coddle them or to baby them. It's to help them it's to push them.