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2 ."The hallmark of ADD is an automatic, unwilled “tuning out,” a frustrating non-presence of mind. People suddenly find that they have heard nothing of what they have been listening to, saw nothing of what they were looking at"

3. "One misses information and directions, misplaces things, and struggles to stay abreast of conversations." "There is a sense being cut off from reality, an almost disembodied separation from the physical present."

4. "..needs a much higher level of motivation than do other people" "The threat of failure or the promise of reward has to be immediate for the motivation apparatus to be turned on"

5. "Social skills are an issue. Something about ADD hinders one’s capacity to recognize interpersonal boundaries. They approach other children with a naive and unrequited openness, to which rebuffs are often the response. Impaired in reading social cues, they may be ostracized"

6. "Many are recognizable by their compulsive joking, their pressured, rapid-fire speech, by their seemingly random and aimless hopping from one topic to the next, and by their inability to express an idea without exhausting the English vocabulary."

7. "This sense of being always on the outside looking in, of somehow missing the point, is pervasive. At social events I tend to gravitate to the periphery, conscious of a feeling that somehow I cannot enter into the spirit of things."

8. "People with ADD are hypersensitive. That is not a fault or a weakness of theirs, it is how they were born. It is their inborn temperament."

9. "I may have to be somewhere, miles away, at 9:00 a.m., but as long as it is not yet nine, I fully believe I have time enough. One is either hopelessly short of time, dashing about like a deaf bat, or else acts as if blessed with the gift of eternity."

10. "It’s as if one’s time sense never developed past a stage other people leave behind in early childhood." (To the very young child, any block of time seems infinite.)

11. "ADD children are less likely to have the comfort and support that only loving grandparents can give." "They do not see their brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers as often as others tend to. When they do see their families, the interaction tends not to be satisfactory."

12. "For a person with ADD, tuning out is an automatic brain activity that originated during the period of rapid brain development in infancy when there was emotional hurt combined with helplessness."

13. "Many people with ADD have noticed that a strange drowsiness may come over them in the midst of some emotionally charged situations, as, for example, during a conflict with a spouse."

14. "John Ratey has aptly observed that **“I’m sorry” is the most common phrase in the vocabulary of attention deficit disorder."

15. "They apologize when I ask them to speak louder, when they cannot easily answer a question, when I interrupt their flow of speech to ask for more information, when I tell them that we will wind up the session in a few minutes as time is running out."

16. "Too much praise can be almost as harmful as too much criticism. They seem opposite, but the underlying message is the same: the parent puts a high value not on who the child is, but on what he does."

17. "This is why many ADD children, no matter how much they crave and court attention, are uncomfortable with praise"

18. On Rebelliousness: "Counterwill is an automatic resistance put up by a human being with an incompletely developed sense of self, a reflexive and unthinking going against the will of the other. It is a natural but immature resistance arising from the fear of being controlled"

19. "...I have always felt, in almost any situation, a compulsive urge to expose the feet of clay, the chink in the armor, the flaws of those in charge"

20. "In essence, the child erects a wall of “no’s”. Behind this wall the child can gradually learn her likes and dislikes, aversions or preferences, without being overwhelmed by the far more powerful force generated by the parent’s will."

21. "This why the various epithets such as stubborn, wilful, and so on, denote not a strong will but the lack of one"

22. "For ADD children (and for ADD adults) it’s all or nothing. When anger arises, all feelings of attachment and love are banished."

23. "Fear of intimacy is universal among ADD adults. It coexists with what superficially would seem to be its opposites—a desperate craving for affection and a dread of being rejected."

24. "There is the well-known paradox that the person with ADD craves real human contact, feels like an outsider and wishes to belong—but at the same time is reclusive, often preferring his own company to that of others."