Quotes from This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

“Music may be the activity that prepared our pre-human ancestors for speech communication and for the very cognitive, representational flexibility necessary to become humans.”
― Daniel J. Levitin, quote from This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

“If music serves to convey feelings through the interaction of physical gestures and sound, the musician needs his brain state to match the emotional state he is trying to express. Although the studies haven't been performed yet, I'm willing to bet that when B.B. King is playing the blues and when he is feeling the blues, the neural signatures are very similar. (Of course there will be differences, too, and part of the scientific hurdle will be subtracting out the processes involved in issuing motor commands and listening to music, versus just sitting on a chair, head in hands, and feeling down.) And as listeners, there is every reason to believe that some of our brain states will match those of the musicians we are listening to.”
― Daniel J. Levitin, quote from This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

“A bowl of pudding only has taste when I put it in my mouth - when it is in contact. with my tongue. It doesn't have taste or flavor sitting in my fridge, only the potential.”
― Daniel J. Levitin, quote from This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

“For the artist, the goal of the painting or musical composition is not to convey literal truth, but an aspect of a universal truth that if successful, will continue to move and to touch people even as contexts, societies and cultures change. For the scientist, the goal of a theory is to convey "truth for now"--to replace an old truth, while accepting that someday this theory, too, will ve replaced by a new "truth," because that is the way science advances.”
― Daniel J. Levitin, quote from This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

“When they find out what I do for a living, many people tell me they love music listening, but their music lessons 'didn't take.' I think they're being too hard on themselves. The chasm between musical experts and everyday musicians that has grown so wide in our culture makes people feel discouraged, and for some reason this is uniquely so with music. Even though most of us can't play basketball like Shaquille O'Neal, or cook like Julia Child, we can still enjoy playing a friendly backyard game of hoops, or cooking a holiday meal for our friends and family. This performance chasm does seem to be cultural, specific to contemporary Western society. And although many people say that music lessons didn't take, cognitive neuroscientists have found otherwise in their laboratories. Even just a small exposure to music lessons as a child creates neural circuits for music processing that are enhanced and more efficient than for those who lack training. Music lessons teach us to listen better, and they accelerate our ability to discern structure and form in music, making it easier for us to tell what music we like and what we don't like.”
― Daniel J. Levitin, quote from This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

“If a song is a living, breathing entity, you might think of the tempo as its gait—the rate at which it walks by—or its pulse—the rate at which the heart of the song is beating.”
― Daniel J. Levitin, quote from This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

“Headphones opened up a world of sonic colors, a palette of nuances and details that went far beyond the chords and melody, the lyrics, or a particular singer’s voice. The swampy Deep South ambience of “Green River” by Creedence, or the pastoral, open-space beauty of the Beatles’ “Mother Nature’s Son”; the oboes in Beethoven’s Sixth (conducted by Karajan), faint and drenched in the atmosphere of a large wood-and-stone church; the sound was an enveloping experience.”
― Daniel J. Levitin, quote from This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

“It is difficult to appreciate the complexity of the brain because the numbers are so huge. The average brain consists of 100 billion neurons.”
― Daniel J. Levitin, quote from This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

“The number of combinations possible and hence the number of different thoughts or brain states each of us can have exceeds the number of known particles in the entire known universe.”
― Daniel J. Levitin, quote from This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

“And the fetus hears music, as was recently discovered by Alexandra LaMont of Keele University in the U.K. She found that children recognize and prefer music they were exposed to in the womb, a year after they are born.”
― Daniel J. Levitin, quote from This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

“Music communicates to us emotionally through systematic violations of expectations.”
― Daniel J. Levitin, quote from This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

“Even more so in nonindustrialized cultures than in modern Western societies, music is and was part of the fabric of everyday life.”
― Daniel J. Levitin, quote from This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

“He would buy me a pair of headphones if I would promise to use them when he was home. Those headphones forever changed the way I listened to music.”
― Daniel J. Levitin, quote from This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

“Headphones also made the music more personal for me; it was suddenly coming from inside my head, not out there in the world. This”
― Daniel J. Levitin, quote from This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

“At every turn, this provocative work unlocks deep secrets about how nature and nurture forge a uniquely human obsession”
― Daniel J. Levitin, quote from This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

About the author

Popular quotes

“He’s just the “one”. Not in a religious, demi-god sort of way even though I wouldn’t put it past him to think that of himself.”
― J.J. McAvoy, quote from American Savages

“Innumerable careful examinations of all kinds of stones in all parts of the world prove that the earth’s crust was formed about 4,000,000,000 years ago. Yes, and all that science knows is that something like man existed 1,000,000 years ago! And out of that gigantic river of time it has managed to dam up only a tiny rivulet of 7,000 years of human history, at the cost of a lot of hard work, many adventures and a great deal of curiosity. But what are 7,000 years of human history compared with thousands of millions of years of the history of the universe?”
― Erich von Däniken, quote from Chariots of The Gods

“He’s not my dad,” Kaira said. “Just because he married my— As soon as I turn eighteen I’m firing his ass! Then I’ll call you.”
― Louis Sachar, quote from Small Steps

“I knew you lived," her mother said after a moment. "Any daughter of mine would be ruthless enough.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Crimson Bound

“fact, if there was a fire in their house, and Mum could only save either a sparkly gold tap-shoe once worn by Flavio Flavioli (the shiny, tanned dancer and heartbreaker from Italy who appeared on every series of the hit TV show) or her only child, Ben thought she would probably go for the shoe.”
― David Walliams, quote from Gangsta Granny

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.