Ethnographic attention is both a sensory openness and a selective practice shaped by theoretical interests and intuition. Drawing on thinkers such as William James and Roland Barthes, and inspired by the writer Georges Perec, we examine how concrete details gain significance—and how their placement in a text can evoke intensity, atmosphere, and insight. Details may sting like Barthes’ ‘punctum,’ emerge unexpectedly in the writing, or appear only after everything else has been peeled away. Such details can make an impression simply by saying, ‘that’s how it was’ or strike you like a blow. We consider what it means to attend to silence or absence, and how writing can make space for what resists explanation. Learning to notice what is infraordinary or peripheral, and what persists unnoticed, is both an ethical and an analytical task. Attention, we argue, must always be a key element in ethnographic writing.