Focused Listening Quotes

I found the hedge-fund guys I met all to be very, very concentrated listeners - watchful and articulate and quick to defend, if needed. They all seemed to have this contained sitting posture. The legs, if they weren't crossed at right angles, tended to be close over the knee, their hands put together.

Listening is the key to total concentration. You listen as the character would listen, closing the door on everything else. Then you are ready to respond.

We had something to say. Whenever we played, people didn't dance, they listened.

There’s a difference between listening passively and listening aggressively. To listen with your heart, you have to listen actively.

I love jazz. So to me, there are two main types of jazz. There's dancing jazz, and then there's listening jazz. Listening jazz is like Thelonius Monk or John Coltrane, where it's a listening experience. So that's what I like; I like to make stuff that you listen to. It's not really meant to get you up; it's meant to get your mind focused. That's why you sit and listen to jazz. You dance to big band or whatever, but for the most part, you sit and listen to jazz. I think it comes from that aesthetic, trying to take that jazz listening experience and put it on hip-hop.

Putting a needle on a record is almost like you're making a commitment to listening to something.

When you think you're listening to several conversations at once, they tell me, you may really simply be time sharing - that is, listening a little bit to this one, a little bit to that one.

Whether you're with a group of people, whether you're playing music or whether you're by yourself, even if it's written material, you have to be listening.

I'm too busy playing. When I'm playing I don't pay attention to who's listening. When I was listening I listened to symphony orchestras, Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Stravinsky. You don't listen to one instrument; you listen to music.

When I've had to edit my albums, I'll listen to it one time through, and I'll make edits. I want to remember to set up a camera to record myself listening to my set, because I don't even slightly crack a smile, I am just listening for technical details, and I look like somebody that has absolutely no sense of humor. I look insane.

There's something about the silence of people listening to someone or watching someone - I just... I love that.

Music to me was never something that I could listen to while reading a book. Especially when I was studying music, if I was going to listen to music, I was going to put on the headphones or crank the stereo, and by God, I was going to sit there and just listen to music. I wasn't going to talk on the phone and multitask, which I can't do anyway.

If you want to become a better listener, however you need to learn to direct that energy and attention positively by concentrating on the person you're with.

There is a silence that matches our best possibilities when we have learned to listen to others. We can master the art of being quiet in order to be able to hear clearly what others are saying. . . . We need to cut off the garbled static of our own preoccupations to give to people who want our quiet attention.

Listening takes practice, and it takes patience. But I promise, if you listen, your story will be better for it.

I know so few people who actually give music their undivided attention, so I've been trying to just park myself on the couch between the speakers and listen.

Any album that you pick up of mine, you know it's an Akon album. The guests are very limited, and you get to really feel the experience. You get the Akon experience when you get the albums. I always want to make sure that stays the way it is. I don't want to flood the album to where you lose focus on why you bought it.

A need to concentrate on each sound, so that every blade of grass would be as important as a flower.

When you listen to a Yes album, you should listen to the whole thing through headphones with the lights off.

If you could only play a record once, imagine the intensity you’d have to bring into the listening.