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.

Children don't need much advice but they really do need to be listened to and not just with half an ear.

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

I'm not afraid of wanting money at all. Money will give me more power to do things that are truer to my spirit than what I'm already doing.