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Daniel Levitin takes the most sophisticated ideas that exist about the brain and mind, applies them to the most emotionally direct art we have, our songs, and makes beautiful music of the two together.

Adam Gopnik

It mocks mercilessly the pretensions to truth of Mormonism and the pretensions to virtue of Mormon missionaries.
ADAM GOPNIK

Mercilessly Missionaries Mock Mormonism Pretension Truth Virtue
You can stand up and tell a story that is made entirely, embarrassingly, of “I’s,” and a listening audience somehow turns each “I” into a “me.”
ADAM GOPNIK

Childbirth Entirely Friendship Made Marriage Stand Story Strangest Tell
Music is a current of hard choices made to seem easy by the mind.
ADAM GOPNIK

Choice Current Easy Made Mind Mindset Music Okay Seem
Whatever sense of professional competence we feel in adult life is less the sum of accomplishment than the absence of impossibility:
ADAM GOPNIK

Accomplishment Adult Competence Less Professional relief Sense Sum
Often the block [in writing] comes from the wall of words that keep out the simplicity of sense.
ADAM GOPNIK

Block Keep Often Sense Simplicity Wall Word Writing
In bookstores, my stuff is usually filed in the out-of-the-way, additional interest sections.
ADAM GOPNIK

Additional Bookstore Field Interest Out Stuff Usually Way
Frauds master our minds; magicians, like poets and lovers, engage them in a permanent maze of possibilities.
ADAM GOPNIK

Engage Lover Magic Magician Master Maze Mind Permanent Poet
Wit and puns aren’t just décor in the mind; they’re essential signs that the mind knows it’s on, recognizes its own software, can spot the bugs in its own program.
ADAM GOPNIK

Absence Bug Decor Essential Mind Missing Pun
If we had been there listening, we still might not have been able to determine exactly what Stanton said. All we know for sure is that everyone was weeping, and the room was full.
ADAM GOPNIK

Determine Exactly Full Listening might Room Stanton Still Sure Weeping
It’s really our relief at no longer having to do things we were never good at doing in the first place – relief at never again having to dissect a frog or memorize the periodic table.
ADAM GOPNIK

Again Dissect Doing First Frog Longer. Thing Memorize never Periodic Place relief Table
The French believe that all errors are distant, someone else’s fault. Americans believe that there is no distance, no difference, and therefore that there are no errors
ADAM GOPNIK

Believe Country Distance Error Fault Language Simple
Merely that you start off with ideas buzzing around in your head, and then you try to give them the simpler, more graceful shape, of a feeling that a reader might share.
ADAM GOPNIK

Buzz Buzzing Feeling Give Giving Head Idea Merely Start Try
Credibility’ is defined as the willingness to kill a lot of people now for a not very good cause to assure the world that we’ll kill a lot more people if we can find a better one.
ADAM GOPNIK

Assure Better Cause Credibility Defined Good Kill Lot Now One People Willingness World
American long for a closed society in which everything can be bought, where laborers are either hidden away or dressed up as nonhumans, so as not to be disconcerting. This place is called Disney World.
ADAM GOPNIK

Closed Country Dressed Everything Laborer Long Society World
I think is the core of what it means to live a civilised life.
ADAM GOPNIK

Civilised Core Life Live Mean Think Thinking
The overwhelming and underlying desire for something truly terrible to happen so that you could have something really hot to talk about – was still startling.
ADAM GOPNIK

Desire Happen Hot Overwhelming Something Truly Underlying

Daniel Levitin takes the most sophisticated ideas that exist about the brain and mind, applies them to the most emotionally direct art we have, our songs, and makes beautiful music of the two together.

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Popular Authors

Daniel Levitin takes the most sophisticated ideas that exist about the brain and mind, applies them to the most emotionally direct art we have, our songs, and makes beautiful music of the two together.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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