Daniel Levitin Quotes about Art

The brain has an attentional mode called the mind wandering mode that was only recently identified. This is when thoughts move seamlessly from one to another, often to unrelated thoughts, without you controlling where

The brain has an attentional mode called the "mind wandering mode" that was only recently identified. This is when thoughts move seamlessly from one to another, often to unrelated thoughts, without you controlling where they go. This brain state acts as a neural reset button, allowing us to come back to our work with a refreshed perspective. Different people find they enter this mode in different ways: reading, a walk in nature, looking at art, meditating, and napping. A 15-minute nap can produce the equivalent of a 10-point boost in IQ.

Daniel Levitin

Art, Moving, Reading

"Daniel J. Levitin Q&A: 'We've created more information in the past few years than in all of human history before us'". Interview with Lisa O'Kelly, www.theguardian.com. January 18, 2015.

The power of art is that it can connect us to one another, and to larger truths about what it means to be alive and what it means to be human.

Daniel Levitin

Art, Mean, Alive

Daniel J. Levitin (2011). “This Is Your Brain On Music: Understanding a Human Obsession”, p.244, Atlantic Books Ltd

In order to be a world-class expert in anything, be it audiology, drama, music, art, gymnastics, whatever, one needs to have a minimum of 10,000 hours of practice. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean that if you put in 10,000 hours that you will become an expert, but there aren't any cases where someone has achieved world-class mastery without it! So the time spent at the activity is indeed the most important and influential factor.

Daniel Levitin

Art, Drama, Mean

What makes a set of lines and colors into art is the relationship between this line and that one; the way one color or form echoes another in a different part of the canvas.

Daniel Levitin

Art, Color, Echoes

Daniel J. Levitin (2011). “This Is Your Brain On Music: Understanding a Human Obsession”, p.18, Atlantic Books Ltd

The first forms of writing emerged not for art, literature, or love, not for spiritual or liturgical purposes, but for business--all literature could be said to originate from sales receipts (sorry).

Daniel Levitin

Spiritual, Art, Sorry

Daniel Levitin (2015). “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload”, p.33, Penguin UK

Those dabs of paint and lines become art when form and flow are created out of lower-level perceptual elements. When they combine harmoniously they give rise to perspective, foreground and background, and ultimately to emotion and other aesthetic attributes.

Daniel Levitin

Art, Giving, Perspective

Daniel J. Levitin (2011). “This Is Your Brain On Music: Understanding a Human Obsession”, p.18, Atlantic Books Ltd