Something about the topic of consciousness makes people, like the White Queen in Through The Looking Glass, believe six impossible things before breakfast.

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.

It is so good to have friends who understand how there is a time for crying and a time for laughing, and that sometimes the two are very close together.

Writing is a blurred mirror. Sometimes we work harder to see how we are reflected, but often we avert our gaze from the shadowy image.

Layer by layer art strips life bare.

Every time I finish a record, it's sort of feels like, "I can't believe that I'm hanging out and having a conversation, and people are gonna listen to this." It's an odd thing, but it's really cool.

I've had Irish skin from the time I was a young girl.

Love is happy when it is able to give something. The ego is happy when it is able to take something.

I've succeeded at everything except my life.

I'm running on adrenalin when we're shooting. It's non-stop. As soon as I have time to sit down, then I fall asleep.

We live in an interdependent world. Every time you cut off somebody else's opportunities, you shrink your own horizons.

I will always have two regrets. I don't have a presence in London, and I would have liked to have done more work in the Middle East.