Judith Martin Quotes

We're plugged in 24 hours a day now. We're all part of one big machine, whether we are conscious of that or not. And if we can't unplug from that machine, eventually we're going to become mindless.

I'm not one of those people who sits at dinner on their iPhone all night. I'm either working or I'm not. I've gone down that path where you sleep with your phone beside the bed and send an email just before you put your head down and check everything again when you wake up, and I don't like it.

I'm desperately trying to unplug. The last thing I want is a watch that connects to my phone which connects to my iPad that connects to my computer that airplays to my TV.

The dirty little secret that nobody likes to talk about is that things just might have been better before the Internet. We had more time to ourselves before cell phones and text messaging and Facebook consumed our lives.

We're in a digital age where it's cool to be on your iPhone all the time. All of out-of-school activities my daughter has such as piano one day and acting another day and dance another day are about getting her away from that. People are on video games and their phones, and it's taking up all their mental space.

That enforced time when you have to switch off, that you're on a plane, is so unusual these days. It's just that thing of not being able to interact with other people through e-mails or social media or whatever. It's crazy how you even notice that you're not able to do that. I find that the kind of traveling - long days, particularly if you go somewhere to do a show, and then traveling again the next day - a lot of people would find pretty challenging, but I find it energizing in a weird way.

I am the first to admit my iPad is the coolest thing in the world, but when we can be in a room together and really connect, or leave the gadgets home and go for a hike, then I'm happy.

Canceling my landline phone account, cutting off service to my home for good, and rendering the telephones that had long sat on tables in every room as useless as my closeted bread machine, I took the final step in a lifelong attempt to free myself from the wires that tethered me.

We get sucked into the Internet and streaming information, and it's time to just unplug and look within.

If you're always worried about being on your phone, then you really are missing out on everything that's happening in front of you.

Even when you take a holiday from technology, technology doesn't take a break from you.

The moment of drifting into thought has been so clipped by modern technology. Our lives are filled with distraction with smartphones and all the rest. People are so locked into not being present.

I think the discipline comes with turning that cellphone and Blackberry off and unplugging completely. You do that and you go through some withdrawals in the beginning. You start thinking, 'Oh, do I need to do this? Do I need to do that?' You forget that we were doing just fine with the payphone.

During the summers, when I'm in Maine, I work at a desk that's located beyond all tendrilly wi-fi reaches. It takes me a few days to break the constant e-mail-checking habit, then I find I don't want to check my e-mail ever, and often don't for days.

I've given up email. Well, almost. At the weekend I set up one of those auto-reply messages, informing my correspondents that I would no longer be checking my emails, and that instead they might like to call or write, as we used to in the olden days.

My mind is constantly going. For me to completely relax, I gotta get rid of my cell phone.

I was the last person to get high-speed Internet, I was the last person to get an iPod, the last person to get an iPhone... I travel to India for one month out of the year and I don't have a phone there, so I can go without, which is beautiful, too.

These days, unplugged places are getting hard to find.

While technology empowers us to remain connected all the time, it's up to us as people to decide when is it not appropriate to be connected... to opt out when you need to.

I find it refreshing to unplug from it for a while. You kind of forget how deeply you get embedded in it.

I'm still struggling with whether I might want to get off the Internet. More and more people I know have. Daniel Day Lewis doesn't do the Internet at all, and I noticed he had many more books open around his house.

I want to be able to leave my phone at home.

If you're constantly stimulated by being called away to the buzzing and the excitement of what's on your phone, solitude seems kind of scary.

I actually have this fantasy of giving up my cell phone.

If we're not shooting, if we're not filming, if you're not standing on the soundstage, turn off your phone and go live your life.