If you want someone to listen, say something worth listening to.

From Alfred’s journal

A man on the bench by the library spent forty minutes telling a woman that nobody listens to him anymore. She listened to all of it. For years I thought the trouble with being heard was volume, or timing, or the rudeness of the world, and I worked on my delivery the way some birds work on their plumage. Then Switch came up the trunk with half a walnut and said the fence line was rotted through at the north end, and I stopped mid-sentence to hear it, because it was true and it mattered and it was news. If you want someone to listen, say something worth listening to. The man was still going when I flew off, and I do not know whether she ever said anything back.