I get drawn in when I feel there is something deep and mysterious going on beneath the surface of something.

Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language.

Why are empirical questions about how the mind works so weighted down with political and moral and emotional baggage?

All our behaviours are a result of neurophysiological activity in the brain. There is no reason to believe there is any magic going on.

I suspect music is auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of... our mental faculties.

Evolutionary psychology is one of four sciences that are bringing human nature back into the picture.

Thanks to the redundancy of language, yxx cxn xndxrstxnd whxt x xm wrxtxng xvxn xf x rxplxcx xll thx vxwxls wxth xn "x" (t gts lttl hrdr f y dn't vn kn whr th vwls r)

Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world.

Plants can't very well defend themselves by their behavior, so they resort to chemical warfare, and plants are saturated with toxins and irritants to deter creatures like us who want to eat them.

I would argue that nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift.

Babies are born with the instinct to speak, the way spiders are born with the instinct to spin webs. You don't need to train babies to speak; they just do. But reading is different.

Don’t believe those who say, ‘you can’t’. You can make it in life.You can realise all your dreams.

There can never be suffering in the home of a person who is working for world's salvation.

You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.

One of life's challenging realizations is that sometimes you outgrow your friends.

There's many a good tune played by an old banjo.

The concept that you are not ingesting rotting flesh sort of sums it up for me.

There is no slave out of heaven like a loving woman; and of all loving women, there is no such slave as a mother.

Perl was designed to work more like a natural language. It's a little more complicated but there are more shortcuts, and once you learned the language, it's more expressive.

I grew up in a household that revered building businesses. It wasn't thinking about leadership; it was more about building something. To build something, you ultimately have to lead.

When you step away from it all, you lose perspective.