Bernard Beckett Quotes

We havent really paid much attention to thought as a process. we have engaged in thoughts, but we have only paid attention to the content, not to the process.

A lot of writing is thinking.

Some scholars argue that although the brain might contain neural subsystems, or modules, specialized for tasks like recognizing faces and understanding language, it also contains a part that constitutes a person, a self: the chief executive of all the subsystems.

A thought is an idea in transit.

You'd be surprised how hard it can often be to translate an action into an idea.

Every new concept first comes to the mind in a judgment.

Visualization is daydreaming with a purpose.

People seem to have trouble with the imagination. They can't believe that you can just pull things out of your brain like that.

You have something that exists in your head, and getting that abstract thought from your head into something that actually exists is a difficult process.

Most intuitive ideas have to be clarified, so there is a trial and error process.

I always like to think on a problem before reading about it.

I only think in live action.

From my first published paper in 1946, my obsession has been to objectify inner experiences, to demystify the software of human existence. How? By relating changes in external behavior, systematically and lawfully, to changes in the brain.

My mind jumbles things, reassembles them, and plays with words without even being asked.

I became interested in structure when I was in graduate school. How is it that the brain perceives structure in a sometimes disorganized and chaotic world? How and why do we categorize things? Why can things be categorized in so many different ways, all of which can seem equally valid?

Your brain does not manufacture thoughts. Your thoughts shape neural networks.

Every action is an idea before it is an action, and perhaps a feeling before it is an idea, and every idea rests upon other ideas that have preceded it in time.

Most writing doesn’t take place on the page; it takes place in your head.

Thought is prior to language and consists in the simultaneous presentation to the mind of two different images.

The next big project, you yourself have to conceive.

When I'm problem-solving with something, I have, effectively, a CAD program in my head that's like a room that has specific qualities to it that I go to some deal of effort to populate. Textures and smells, something like that.

Most of my work is in my mind.

I like explication of ideas, even if I'm wrong or even if it's a struggle or if it's a work in progress.

I've always been interested in visualizing something, whether it's a memory or an idea you want to be true. I am a big believer in that. I'm constantly thinking of that. If I can't picture something, then it doesn't make sense to me.

I write non-fiction quicker, and I write it on a computer. Fiction I write longhand, and that helps make it clear that it comes from a slightly different part of the brain, I think.