Ian Mcewan Quotes

The mind is the seat of perception of the things we see, hear, and feel. It is through the mind that we see the beauties of the earth and sky, or music, of art, in fact, of everything. That silent shuttle of thought working in and out through cell and nerve weaves into one harmonious whole the myriad moods of mind, and we call it life.

We are astonished at thought, but sensation is equally wonderful.

Consciousness... does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life. Source of the expression 'stream of consciousness'.

Consciousness is the foundation of all thinking; and thinking is the foundation of all consciousness.

Every thought derives from a thwarted sensation.

Intuition is for thinking what observation is for perception. Intuition and observation are the sources of our knowledge.

How do we see physically? No differently that we do in our consciousness - by means of the productive power of imagination. Consciousness is the eye and ear, the sense for inner and outer meaning.

The senses collect the surface facts of matter... It was sensation; when memory came, it was experience; when mind acted, it was knowledge; when mind acted on it as knowledge, it was thought.

Our beliefs and our attention are the same fact.

Sensations are nothing but confused modes of thinking.

Philosophers say that nothing can be seen that is neither illuminated nor colored.

Consciousness is a sea ringed with visions.

Asleep vision (dreaming) is perception that is not tied down to anything in the real world; waking perception is something like dreaming with a little more commitment to what's in front of you.

Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought

The mind's capacity is limitless, and its manifestations are inexhaustible. Seeing forms with your eyes, hearing sounds with your ears, smelling odors with your nose, tasting flavors with your tongue, every movement or state is all your mind.

Consciousness is nothing but awareness the composite of all the thing we pay attention to.

The mind is a kind of theater, where several perceptions successively make their appearence; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.

Everything is a reenactment. We are reenacting the world in the mind. The world is not inside there. It does not reside in the gray matter of the brain.

I've been wanting to tell people my theory about what goes on after time. It's beyond our consciousness. We get glimpses of it between the infrared and the ultraviolet - the narrow narrow corridor of light that we are able to perceive.

What shall I compare it to, this fantastic thing I call my Mind? To a waste-paper basket, to a sieve choked with sediment, or to a barrel full of floating froth and refuse? No, what it is really most like is a spider's web, insecurely hung on leaves and twigs, quivering in every wind, and sprinkled with dewdrops and dead flies. And at its centre, pondering forever the Problem of Existence, sits motionless the spider-like and uncanny Soul.

Life in the true sense is perceiving or thinking.

You take the senses away, and there is no consciousness. Consciousness comes from experience.

I am thing that thinks: that is, a things that doubts,affirms, denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many things, is willing, is unwilling, and also which imagines and has sensory perceptions.

Every morning we awaken from sleep and from our dreams and enter the state we call wakefulness. A continuous stream of thoughts, most of them repetitive, characterizes the normal wakeful state.

The arts are neglected because they are based on perception, and perception is disdained because it is not assumed to involve thought.