Alison Gopnik

We say that children are bad at paying attention, but we really mean that they're bad at not paying attention - they easily get distracted by anything interesting.

The radio was an improvement on the telegraph but it didn't have the same exponential, transformative effect.

Something like reading depends a lot on just having people around you who talk to you and read you books, more than sitting down and, say, doing a reading drill when you're 3 or 4 years old.

I'm a working stiff, baby, just like everybody else.

As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short.

I had this wild imagination. I was never me. All my childhood photos, I'm in fancy dress, playing a Russian refuge or Marvelous Mad Madam Mim.