Siri Hustvedt Quotes

There is no fixed physical reality, no single perception of the world, just numerous ways of interpreting world views as dictated by one's nervous system and the specific environment of our planetary existence.

The mind-brain is lived only from a first-person perspective, and it is a dynamic, plastic organ that changes in relation to the environment.

Beyond mind, there is an awareness that is intrinsic, that is not given to you by the outside, and is not an idea - and there is no experiment up to now that has found any center in the brain which corresponds to awareness.

Consciousness begins when brains acquire the power, the simple power I must add, of telling a story.

To live (as I understand it) is to exist within a conception of time. But to remember is to vacate the very notion of time. Every memory, no matter how remote its subject, takes place 'Now,' at the moment it's called to the mind. The more something is recalled, the more the brain has a chance to refine the original experience. Because every memory is a re-creation, not a playback.

The brain is not, and cannot be, the sole or complete organ of thought and feeling.

It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.

The brain, is the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe.

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.

MIND, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain. Its chief activity consists in the endeavour to ascertain its own nature, the futility of the attempt being due to the fact that it has nothing but itself to know itself with.

Brain deals exclusively with the physical, and mind exclusively with the metaphysical.

When you understand how the mind-brain functions together, you know that faith, which is believing before seeing, is the natural process of creation.

Keep thinking. You can hear our brains rattling around inside us, like the littler Russian dolls.

Brain: an apparatus with which we think that we think. Mind, n. A mysterious form of matter secreted by the brain.

We are not passive exhibitors of visual or auditory or tactile images. We have selves. We have a Me that is automatically present in our minds right now.

I believe consciousness is brazenly physical, a raucous mirage the brain creates to help us survive.

The deep secret of the brain is that not only the spinal cord but the entire central nervous system works this way: internally generated activity is modulated by sensory input. In this view, the difference between being awake and being asleep is merely that the data coming in from the eyes anchors the perception.

People aren't just people, they are people surrounded by circumstances.

The thing I want to know is, if you tell your brain not to do stuff... and it keeps doing it anyway, does that mean your mind has a mind of its own? And if it does, then who's in charge here, anyway?

Many people help construct our attitudes at a certain time and place.

The last thing that man will understand in nature is the performance of his brain.

If I became just a brain in a jar - as long as I can communicate back and forth with people, that would be okay with me.

If other people see you differently, you’ll end up seeing them differently, too.

And of course, the brain is not responsible for any of the sensations at all. The correct view is that the seat and source of sensation is the region of the heart.