"We rarely recognize how wonderful it is that a person can traverse an entire lifetime without making a single really serious mistake — like putting a fork in one's eye or using a window instead of a door."

“Music... immerses us in seemingly stable worlds! How can this be, when there is so little of it present at each moment?”

“Only the surface of reason is rational. I don't mean that understanding emotion is easy, only that understanding reason is probably harder.”

“This book... too, is a society — of many small ideas. Each by itself is only common sense, yet when we join enough of them we explain the strangest mysteries of mind.”

“Hearing music is like viewing scenery and... when we hear good music our minds react in very much the same way they do when we see things.”

“If there's something you like very much then you should regard this not as you feeling good but as a kind of brain cancer, because it means that some small part of your mind has figured out how to turn off all the other things.”

“Perhaps it is no accident that one meaning of the word express is "to squeeze"—for when you try to "express yourself," your language resources will have to pick and choose among the descriptions your other resources construct—and then attempt to squeeze a few of these through your tiny channels of phrases and gestures.”