Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else's thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person's vantage point.

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.

BREXIT?So mental a political tap dance, that it makes riding a porcupine bareback over a cliff seem the only sane thing to do.

We are always - always- in choice.

Believing in the sovereignty of God injects courage in the act of desire.

You have to experience life, make observations, and ask questions.

Fresh grapes and wine are perhaps the most luscious foods we mortals encounter during our sojourn here.

Hinduism loses its right to make a universal appeal if it closes its temples to Harijans.

A powerful enough metaphor grows its own truth.

I want to sell out arenas and make an album and work with some of the best artists in the world.

If we went into stores only when we needed to buy something, and if once there we bought only what we needed, the economy would collapse, boom.

I promise you, Donald [Trump], there's nothing about you that makes anyone nervous.