Switching Off Quotes

Lily says nothing as she heads to bed. But then she looks at me and says, 'You sound just like Ma,' before switching off the lights and plunging us into darkness. I'm left frozen by her words. I was wrong. Because as it turns out, that's the ultimate diss in our family. ~ Wai Chim

The effect on the planet of having one child less is an order of magnitude greater than all these other things we might do, such as switching off lights. The greatest thing anyone in Britain could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child. ~ John Guillebaud

Recreating the experience of, say, bereavement in my own head is pretty rough. I was used to switching off from emotions every day of my working life as a journalist, but in fiction, you have to feel it 100%, or else it's a flat experience for the reader. ~ Karen Traviss

You can drive an SUV, but there's a balance. If you do that, maybe use energy-efficient light bulbs at home or just be conscious of switching off lights. If you can afford to drive an SUV, maybe you can afford to make a donation to a wind farm or plant some trees. It's all about balance. ~ Orlando Bloom

While you spoke, it reached into the room 
switching off the mirrors in their frames 
and undeveloping your photographs;
it gently drew a knife across the threads
that tied your keepsakes to the things they kept ~ Don Paterson

It's like any time a white friend suggests Korean barbecue. Or when I see a Food Network special where some tattooed white dude with a nineteenth-century-looking beard-and-mustache combo introduces viewers to this kimchi al pastor bánh mì monstrosity he peddles from a food truck that sends out location tweets. It's like when white people tell me how much they love kimchee and bull-go-ghee, and the words just roll off their tongues as if there exists nothing irreconcilable between the two languages.
It's like, don't touch my shit.
It's difficult to articulate because I know it's not rational. But as a bilingual immigrant from Korea, as someone who code-switches between Korean and English daily while running errands or going to the supermarket, not to mention the second-nature combination of the languages that I'll speak with my parents and siblings, switching on and switching off these at times unfeasibly different sounds, dialects, grammatical structures? It's fucking irritating. I don't want to be stingy about who gets to enjoy all these fermented wonders -- I'm glad the stigma around our stinky wares is dissolving away. But when my husband brings me a plate of food he made out of guesswork with a list of ingredients I've curated over the years of my burgeoning adulthood with the implicit help of my mother, my grandmother, and my grandmother's mother who taught me the patience of peeling dozens of garlic cloves in a sitting with bare hands, it puts me in snap-me-pf ~ Sung Yim

To design means forcing ourselves to unlearn what we believe we already know, patiently to take apart the mechanisms behind our reflexes and to acknowledge the mystery and stupefying complexity of everyday gestures like switching off a light of turning on a tap ~ Alain De Botton

Like evolution itself, there have been rapid advances and crippling setbacks along the way. If the Library of Alexandria had never been burned to the ground it is possible to imagine that we would have built upon the achievements of the ancient Greeks to greater and earlier effect, and therefore it could have been in the time of a Cardano or a Newton or a Pascal that we first put a man on the moon. And we can only wonder where we would be. And at the planets we would have terraformed and colonised by the twenty-first century. Which medical advances we would have made. Maybe if there had been no dark ages, no switching off of the light, we would have found a way never to grow old, to never die. ~ Matt Haig

When I'm working, I have a hard time switching off, and when I'm not working, I have a hard time thinking of ever wanting to work again. ~ Natalie Massenet

I think life always provides reasons to not die, if we listen hard enough. Those reasons can stem from the past - the people who raised us, maybe, or friends or lovers - or from the future - the possibilities we would be switching off. ~ Matt Haig

Throughout history, wise observers of human behavior have pinpointed over and over again a core group of unhealthy human tendencies that are obstacles to happiness. They're the states of mind that distract us in meditation practice, and trip us up in the rest of our lives. Broadly speaking, they are: desire, aversion, sloth, restlessness, and doubt. And they manifest in a variety of ways - many of which you'll recognize. Desire includes grasping, clinging, wanting, or attachment. Aversion can appear as hatred, anger, fear, or impatience. Sloth is not just laziness, but also numbing out, switching off, disconnecting, and the sluggishness that comes with denial or feeling overwhelmed: This is going to be difficult; I think I'll take a nap. Restlessness shows itself as anxiety, worry, fretfulness, or agitation. The kind of doubt we're talking about is not healthy questioning but rather the inability to make a decision or commitment. Doubt keeps us feeling stuck; we don't know what to do next. Doubt undermines wholehearted involvement (in relationships, in our meditation practice) and robs us of in-depth experience. ~ Sharon Salzberg

The elimination of the will altogether and the switching off of the emotions all and sundry, is tantamount to the elimination of reason: intellectual castration. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The system can be paralyzed in yet another way. Every feedback system needs a margin of "lag" or error. If we try to make a thermostat absolutely accurate–that is, if we bring the upper and lower limits of temperature very close together in an attempt to hold the temperature at a constant 70 degrees–the whole system will break down. For to the extent that the upper and lower limits coincide, the signals for switching off and switching on will coincide! If 70 degrees is both the lower and upper limit the "go" sign will also be the "stop" sign; "yes" will imply "no" and "no" will imply "yes." Whereupon the mechanism will start "trembling," going on and off, on and off, until it shakes itself to pieces. The system is too sensitive and shows symptoms which are startlingly like human anxiety. For when a human being is so self-conscious, so self-controlled that he cannot let go of himself, he dithers or wobbles between opposites. This is precisely what is meant in Zen by going round and round on "the wheel of birth-and-death," for the Buddhist samsara is the prototype of all vicious circles. We saw that when the furnace responds too closely to the thermostat, it cannot go ahead without also trying to stop, or stop without also trying to go ahead. This is just what happens to the human being, to the mind, when the desire for certainty and security prompts identification between the mind and its own image of itself. It cannot let go of itself. It feels that it should not do what it i ~ Alan W. Watts

Cannabinoids like cannabidiol (CBD) can prevent the cancer cells from spreading by switching off a gene called Id-1. Studies showed that the rapid increase in these cancer cells was decreased to a certain extent after treating with cannabidiol. ~ Thomas Longe

Sissie could see it all. In her uncertain eyes, on her restless hands and on her lips, which she kept biting all the time.
But oh, her skin. It seemed as if according to the motion of her emotions Marija's skin kept switching on and switching off like a two-colour neon sign. So that watching her against the light of the dying summer sun, Sissie could not help thinking that it must be a pretty dangerous matter, being white. It made you feel awfully exposed, rendered you terribly vulnerable. Like being born without your skin or something. As though the Maker had fashioned the body of a human, stuffed it into a polythene bag instead of the regular protective covering, and turned it loose into the world.
Lord, she wondered, is that why, on the whole, they have had to be extra ferocious? Is it so they could feel safe here on the earth, under the sun, the moon and the stars? ~ Ama Ata Aidoo

I honestly never thought in my career I was going to do a body-switching movie. ~ David Dobkin

There were no witnesses except the woman who'd been up all night, had consumed two beers and three vodka tonics before switching to (and sharing) the play-wright's Scotch, and she (the witness) could remember the morning only in snatches, like the digital stills and clips that cycled through her computer's screensaver. ~ Dana Cann

The simple act of being interrupted is one of the biggest barriers to productivity ... What looks like multitasking is really switching back and forth between multiple tasks, which reduces productivity and increases mistakes by up to 50 percent. ~ Susan Cain

At retirement, switching from "I must" to "I want" leaves me puzzled and uneasy. ~ Mason Cooley

Every superhero has this superhero identity and a civilian identity. A lot of their lives are about code switching. ~ Gene Luen Yang

We have a simple rule for switching. Anytime there is movement over the top of a screen, there has to be an automatic switch. If a blind pick is set on one of our defensive players, there has to be a switch. To play good pressure defense, you have to use the switch. ~ Ralph Miller

And so, beginning with the small early frustrations and deprivations, the child is helped to govern himself. his ego develops by learning to regulate his own food intake and feces evacuation: he has to learn to adapt to a social schedule, to an external measure of time, in place of a biological schedule of internal urges. In all this he makes a bitter discovery: that he is no longer himself, just by seeking pleasure. There may be more excitement in the world but the fun keep getting interrupted. For some strange reason the mother doesn't share his glee over a bowel movement on the sofa. The child finds that he has to "earn" the mother's love by performing in a certain way. He comes to realize that he has to abandon the idea of "total excitement" and "uninterrupted fun," if he wants to keep a secure background of love from the mother. This is what Alfred Adler meant when he spoke of the child's need for affection as the "lever" of his education. The child learns to accept frustrations so long as the total relationship is not endangered. This is what the psychoanalytic word "ambivalence" so nicely covers: the child may hesitate between giving up what has previously been an assured satisfaction, and proceeding to a new type of conduct which will be rewarded by a new kind of acceptance. Does he want to keep the breast instead of switching to the bottle? He finds that if he makes this switch he gets a special cooing of praise and a little extra attention. Ambivalence describes the ~ Ernest Becker

Hideo," said my mother, in the terrifying way women have of passing without interval from one subject to another because they have them all present in their mind at once, "you haven't found any kind of relationship? ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

No one's brain is different enough to make constant interruptions, distractions, and task-switching an optimal environment in which to function. No one's. ~ Susan Maushart

There are staples to my show. I have to be conscious about switching things up because I know people who saw me last year will say, 'He did that last time.' But if certain things work, they work. ~ Talib Kweli

Was that Guardian Belikov?" she asked, switching subjects abruptly. "Yeah." I swore I thought she might faint then and there. "Really? He's even cuter than I heard. ~ Richelle Mead

I love going back and forth from drama to comedy. I love switching it around and showing people that I can do both. ~ Kaitlyn Dever

Code-switching in these spaces is a key skill that not everyone can or will acquire. And the toll of not being adept at this skill plays out not only in how girls are treated by their peers but also in how they are treated by the systems they encounter. A girl who is seen as fitting into the patriarchy's preset mold of a "good girl," one who won't engage in any of that pesky interest in herself, her own goals and concerns, but who is instead seemingly willing to be directed, will often find herself offered more resources by teachers, employers, or other people with power to effect a positive change in her life. A counterpart who is messier, louder, and more invested in being true to herself and where she came from, no matter how much that self departs from accepted ideas of a "good girl," is unlikely to benefit from the same resources. ~ Mikki Kendall

When you delve deep enough, you find that practically every great fortune and great enterprise in America have sprung from the courageous enterprise of some individual. It was Commodore Vanderbilt's enterprise in switching first from running a ferryboat to running other ships, and then, when he was well along in years, his enterprise in switching into railroading, that created what was to become one of the most notable fortunes in the history of the world. ~ B.C. Forbes

This entailed switching around by hand ENIAC's rat's nest of cables and resetting its switches. At first the programming seemed to be a routine, perhaps even menial task, which may have been why it was relegated to women, who back then were not encouraged to become engineers. But what the women of ENIAC soon showed, and the men later came to understand, was that the programming of a computer could be just as significant as the design of its hardware. ~ Walter Isaacson

I'd swap with Amelia if I was you. So she doesn't have to sit beside him."
"What about you?"
"Who would you rather he sat next to, me or your sister? Move."
"I've a better idea," he whispered back. "How about I swap with you and make out like I have to tel Aaron something, and then you could cal Amelia over to you like you have something important to tel her. The lights wil go out, and Amelia won't bother switching back."
"Evans, that is a fabulous idea."
"Rivers, I know. ~ Claire Farrell

It's why she's always switching coaches, and it's why she'd rather get third instead of second. When she gets third, at least she's happy to have placed. But second. That's too close to first. ~ Stephanie Perkins

Although I'm known for my long, colorful locs, I still don't take my hair too seriously. I experiment a lot, dyeing it and constantly switching styles to grab attention. My hair is one of my best accessories, and changing it helps express who I am. ~ Ledisi

Deep attention, the cognitive style traditionally associated with the humanities, is characterized by concentrating on a single object for long periods (say, a novel by Dickens), ignoring outside stimuli while so engaged, preferring a single information stream, and having a high tolerance for long focus times. Hyper attention is characterized by switching focus rapidly among different tasks, preferring multiple information streams, seeking a high level of stimulation, and having a low tolerance for boredom. ~ N. Katherine Hayles

This is the switching point, Caspian,' she whispered in his shirt. 'This is me, switching tracks.' 'I guess that's one thing to call it. A new one on me. We could start a new slang. Let's go back to my place and switch tracks. ~ Beatriz Williams

The camp suddenly felt light-years away, as distant as Earth used to look from the Colony. "You make me feel legitimately crazy. You know that, right?" Wells whispered, running his hand down her back. "Why? Because I'm seducing you in a tree?" "Because no matter what else is going on, being with you makes me perfectly happy. It's crazy, switching gears that fast." Wells ran his hand along her cheek. "You're like a drug." Sasha smiled. "I think you need to work on your compliments, space boy." "I've ~ Kass Morgan

She'd been so nervous as the boy took her on the sand, making her his, something switching inside of him as the came together, like the final piece of their souls had fixed in place and all that was left was them as one. ~ Tillie Cole

Viola had a harrowing story about riding a bicycle west out of the burnt-out ruins of a Connecticut suburb, aged fifteen, harboring vague notions of California but set upon by passersby long before she got there, grievously harmed, joining up with other half feral teenagers in a marauding gang and then slipping away from them, walking alone for a hundred miles, whispering French to herself because all the horror in her life had transpired in English and she thought switching languages might save her, wandering into a town through which the Symphony passed five years later. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

I stepped back from being out front to playing bass. So we started switching: I'd play bass on one song, we'd switch on the next song; I'd play piano ... we'd play mandolin. ~ Bob Livingston

The science has changed from ambiguous to near-unanimous ... Based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert. ~ Gregg Easterbrook

It was some kind of cosmic switching device, routing the traffic of the stars through unimaginable dimensions of space and time. He was passing through a Grand Central Station of the galaxy. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

I have putt the change in the till, I have cleaned and made room for new bottles in the cooling sink, for butter and cheese in the icebox. Now I am standing in the shop waiting by the open door without switching the light on. I like this early half-light, the mild air from the sea, standing inside looking out without being seen, and there are almost no sounds from the street, and I can think and remember who I am before anything new comes along. Everything happens so fast it's easy to forget, everything is exploding and burning. But now it is quiet. ~ Per Petterson

I seek from curiosity. I seek the knowing of things." "Knowing is a type of power," Shehyn pointed out, then seemed to change the subject. "Tempi told me there was a Rhinta among the bandits as their leader." "Rhinta?" I asked respectfully. "A bad thing. A man who is more than a man, yet less than a man." "A demon?" I asked, using the Aturan word without thinking. "Not a demon," Shehyn said, switching easily to Aturan. "There are no such things as demons. Your priests tell stories of demons to frighten you." She met my eye briefly, gesturing a graceful: Apologetic honesty and serious import . "But there are bad things in the world. Old things in the shape of men. And there are a handful worse than all the rest. They walk the world freely and do terrible things." I felt hope rising within me. "I have also heard them called the Chandrian," I said. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

They might be talking in perfect latin tongue and without warning begin to talk in perfect anglo tongue and keep it up like that, alternating between a thing that believes itself to be perfect and a thing that believes itself to be perfect, morphing back and forth between two beasts until out of carelessness or clear intent they suddenly stop switching tongues and start speaking that other one. In it brims nostalgia for the land they left or never knew when they use the words with which they name objects; while actions are alluded to with an anglo verb conjugated latin-style, pinning on a sonorous tail from back there. Using in one tongue the word for a thing in the other makes the attributes of both resound: if you say Give me fire when they say Give me a light, what is not to be learned about fire, light and the act of giving? It's not another way of saying things: these are new things ~ Yuri Herrera

With movies, you can do a lot more roles a lot faster. My favorite thing about acting is taking on new characters. It's fun switching it up at times. No matter what, I feel so honored and blessed to be 16 and already living my dream. It's really special. ~ Sammi Hanratty

The risks are worth the rewards."-Micah ~ Rhavensfyre

What's with you fellas and the damn tea? A woman doesn't wanta have tea when she's mad. She does wanta rip your t'roat out."
"Have the coffee, then," he said, switching cups. ~ Lauren Francis-Sharma

They say never ride with the ones you didn't walk with, real friends show you real love not only talk it.
I made the team but figured out the game wasn't important when I found my homies switching sides the nights we wasn't scoring. ~ John Maiorana (oohGiovanni)

Let's start with the most prominent ecological crisis of our time: global warming. When you look seriously at the numbers, you find that switching from a meat-based to a plant-based diet would do more to curb and reverse global warming than any other initiative. ~ T. Colin Campbell

Task switching exacts a cost few realize they are even paying. ~ Gary Keller

The inclusion of lemon or lime juice in grog, made compulsory in 1795, therefore reduced the incidence of scurvy dramatically. And since beer contains no vitamin C, switching from beer to grog made British crews far healthier overall. ~ Tom Standage

For love to last, you had to have illusions or have no illusions at all. But you had to stick to one or the other. It was the switching back and forth that endangered things. ~ Lorrie Moore