Auditory Quotes

• The auditory perception is not sufficient for our knowledge of the world; it does not have vastness.

  Robert Delaunay

  Perception, Doe, World

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• Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language.

  Steven Pinker

  Art, Mind, Details

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• I suspect music is auditory cheesecake, an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of... our mental faculties.

  Steven Pinker

  Sensitive, Cheesecake, Spots

  Steven Pinker (2009). “How the Mind Works”, p.534, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It seems that the brain always has to be active, and if the auditory parts of the brain are not getting sufficient input, then they may start to create hallucinatory sounds on their own. Although it is curious that they do not usually create noises or voices; they create music.

  Oliver Sacks

  Voice, Brain, Sound

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Images are not only visual. They're also auditory, they involve sensuous impressions, bundles of information that come to us through our senses, and mainly through seeing and hearing: the audio-visual field.

  W. J. T. Mitchell

  Audio, Information, Hearing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I have auditory hallucinations, I hear voices saying derogatory things, like I'm terrible and I'm going to die, and they're usually worse in the afternoon.

  Brian Wilson

  Voice, Afternoon, Hallucinations

  "This much I know". Interview with John Hind, www.theguardian.com. August 23, 2008.

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• 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.

  Antonio Damasio

  Self, Brain, Mind

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• Maybe in music you're making an auditory environment and maybe you change your environment around you to suit your own way.

  Florence Welch

  Way, Suits, Environment

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• There are people who seem to be on the verge of going either way, and something kicks in to support either the visual or the auditory. Maybe if you are in a rush for success you follow the one that is the most successful, and the other falls to the wayside.

  Brian Chippendale

  Fall, Successful, People

  Interview with Pitchfork, pitchfork.com. December 5, 2006.

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• The images are visual, auditory, olfactory, kinesthetic. They aren't laid down on the same tracks as thought. And sometimes, when they return to you, it is as if you feel them for the very first time. Memory lives on in the details, like the color of a room, a tone of a voice, the touch of a child, the smell of a man.

  Martha Manning

  Children, Memories, Men

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• I am not surprised that the president of the United States called this a phony scandal. I'm not surprised Secretary Clinton asked, "What difference does it make?" I'm not even surprised that Jay Carney said Benghazi happened a long time ago. I'm just surprised at how many people bought it.

  Trey Gowdy

  Trust, Bad Ass, Usa

  "Gowdy: Why Does the Media Not Care About Benghazi?". www.realclearpolitics.com. May 18, 2014.

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• Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.

  Paul Valery

  Simple, Hands, Water

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• What's always struck me is how different the sensory, especially auditory, experience is when you're in the middle of the music with the musicians playing off each other around you. I wanted to find a way to unlock the intensity of that, to recreate that unique perspective, first for the hundreds of people who attended the concert, and eventually for a much larger online audience.

  Chris Milk

  Unique, People, Perspective

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• The telephone is virtual reality in that you can meet with someone as if you are together, at least for the auditory sense.

  Ray Kurzweil

  Reality, Together, Telephones

  "This is your future" by Ray Kurzweil, www.cnn.com. December 26, 2013.

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• You can look at things all your life and not see them really. This ‘seeing’ is, in a way, a ‘not seeing,’ if you follow me.
  It is more of a search for something, in which, being blindfolded, you develop the tactile, the olfactory, the auditory senses —and thus see for the first time.

  Henry Miller

  Way, Firsts, Looks

  Henry Miller (1950). “The waters reglitterized”

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• You know, mind allows us to portray in different sensory modalities, visual, auditory, olfactory, you name it, what we are like and what the world is like. But this very, very important quality of subjectivity, this quality that allows us to take a distant view and say, "I am here, I exist, I have a life and there are things around me that refer to me." That me-ness, M-E-hyphen, that is what really constitutes consciousness.

  Antonio Damasio

  Views, Names, Mind

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

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• The health of a nation, a society, can be determined by the art it demands. We have insisted of television and our movies that they not have anything to do with anything, that they be our never-never land; and if we demand this same function of our live theatre, what will be left of the visual-auditory arts - save the dance (in which nobody talks) and music (to which nobody listens)?

  Edward Albee

  Art, Land, Live Theatre

  Edward Albee (2009). “Stretching My Mind: The Collected Essays of Edward Albee”, p.10, Da Capo Press

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• Pierce made a calculating noise, accidentally brushing my knee as he shifted. "As Jenks would say, you snore nice." I smiled back unconvincingly. I snore nice. Not "I opine that your auditory nasal exhalations are most pleasing.

  Kim Harrison

  Nice, Noise, Knees

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• Given her deafness, the auditory part of the brain, deprived of its usual input, had started to generate a spontaneous activity of its own, and this took the form of musical hallucinations, mostly musical memories from her earlier life. The brain needed to stay incessantly active, and if it was not getting its usual stimulation..., it would create its own stimulation in the form of hallucinations.

  Oliver Sacks

  Memories, Musical, Brain

  Oliver Sacks (2011). “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain”, p.64, Pan Macmillan

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• We in the "developed" world seem to have many auditory strategies that insulate us from the presence of silence, simplicity, and solitude. When I return to Western culture after time in desert, mountain or forest, I discover how we have filled our world with a multiplicity of noises, a symphony of forgetfulness that keeps our won thoughts and realizations, feelings and intuitions out of audible range.

  Joan Halifax

  Our World, Symphony, Silence

  Joan Halifax (2007). “The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom”, p.38, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• It was the old psychosomatic side-step. Everyone in my family dances it at every opportunity. You've given me a splitting headache! You've given me indigestion! You've given me crotch rot! You've given me auditory hallucinations! You've given me a heart attack! You've given me cancer!

  Erica Jong

  Family, Cancer, Heart

  Erica Jong (2013). “Fear of Flying: 40th Anniversary Edition”, p.74, Open Road Media

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• Making a movie is the same as an orchestra; it's moving all the different instruments and the sounds, the kinetic and the auditory and the visual all together. I'm probably the trombone.

  Sylvester Stallone

  Moving, Together, Sound

  "Sylvester Stallone Talks Topping THE AVENGERS, the Cast, Using Actors’ “Baggage” as an Advantage, and More on the Set of THE EXPENDABLES 3". Group Interview, collider.com. April 16, 2014.

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• I'm an actor, and, beyond that, the thing I do most compulsively is writing. So I come at it very much from this sense of character. I get interested in people. And I feel confident in my capacity to absorb and manifest the characteristics of people. I have a real auditory hang-up for dialogue; re-creating the way people talk really is an addiction in my brain.

  Edward Norton

  Real, Character, Writing

  Interview with Bennett Miller, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 3, 2014.

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• Intuition was not just visual but also auditory and kinesthetic. Those who watched Feynman in moments of intense concentration came away with a strong, even disturbing sense of the physicality of the process, as though his brain did not stop with the grey matter but extended through every muscle in his body.

  James Gleick

  Strong, Grey Matter, Brain

  James Gleick (2011). “Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman”, p.381, Open Road Media

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• I'll never forget it. I was starting to hike up the red rocks, and honestly, it was as if I heard the rock say, 'You have the answers. You are your teacher.' I thought I was having an auditory hallucination.

  Gwyneth Paltrow

  Teacher, Rocks, Answers

  "Gwyneth Unveiled". Interview with Sarah Bailey, www.harpersbazaar.com. April 11, 2013.

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