Trick The Brain Quotes & Sayings

That was the trouble of being old. Your body no longer obeyed you. It did unruly and unreasonable things. An eye suddenly might not see for a moment. Your knees gave out at the wrong time, so that when you thought you were walking north, you might find yourself going a little northwest. Your brain, too, had that same flighty trick. You might be speaking of something and forget it temporarily, - your mind going off at a little to the northwest, too, so to speak. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

I think that God gave us a brain, and that it's the only thing we have to survive. All life forms have some advantage, some trick, some claw, some camouflage, some poison, some speed, something to help them survive. We've got a brain. Therefore it's our duty to use our brain. — George Lucas

This is a dreadful thing to say, but I have wondered in my darker hours that, if everything were legal, wouldn't it be kind of a Darwinian solution to a lot of problems? Who are the bikies that you see who are cruisin' around with no helmet or with a hat turned around like that yoyo in Cheap Trick? They're dummies, and if they splatter their brains all over the sidewalk, they're not going to be collecting food stamps. — Stephen King

I missed her like a reflex, even though I knew that it was just some trick of my undependable brain. Some stupid, vestigial part. The way humans have appendixes, even though they're pointless and mainly just a pain in the butt and people never even think about them unless they have to have them removed. — Gabrielle Zevin

Few of us get anything without working for it. — William Feather

dear god, I am only twenty seven, my cause is defeated, my husband is dead. am I to be one of the poor widows who will spend the rest of their days at someone else's fireside trying to be a good guest? shall I never be kissed again? shall I never feel joy? not ever again? — Philippa Gregory

All of creation is ever present in God. You. Me. That annoying person at your job. That waffle you ate this morning. The coffee cup you just threw away. Everything. Many of us may already think this, but the trick is not just perceiving grace in the brain, but feeling it in the heart. It's about having the experience. — Gary Jansen

What I had begun to discover is that, mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from normal experience, the grey drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain. But it is not an immediately identifiable pain, like that of a broken limb. It may be more accurate to say that despair, owing to some evil trick played upon the sick brain by the inhabiting psyche, comes to resemble the diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room. And because no breeze stirs this cauldron, because there is no escape from the smothering confinement, it is natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion — William Styron

I think it is undeniably true that the human brain must work in models. The trick is to have your brain work better than the other person's brain because it understands the most fundamental models- ones that will do most work per unit. — Charlie Munger

If you smile, even if you're feeling bad, the action of the muscles will trick your brain into thinking you're happy — Candace Bushnell

Anytime you have to get intimate on camera, it's always a little interesting. You have to trick your brain almost, so that you don't get stage fright or get too much in your head where you're super uncomfortable. — Evan Rachel Wood

I'm T. Thorne Rose and I did it hard
Til I wound up dyin in the Zen schoolyard
Can't you see it's more important here to use your brain
Than to poison up your body killin other people's pain
Yes, it's Other People's Pain,
That's a trick you might have missed
So let your Sister Rosie hip you to this little twist
The news, the Blues, the pain, the strain,
the lies we've heard since birth
Are only true if we, ourselves, think that's what life is worth
But when you realize that we are all Queens and Kings
You'll drop the death, take a deep breath,
and hear life when it sings
Don't get lost and washed away like a teardrop in the rain
No abuse of any kind has ever come to any gain
Sister T. Thorn Rose from the group Goldensealed — Doug "Ten" Rose

Writing is nearly always a matter of finding whatever your brain needs to trick it into being creative, and in my case, a tiny little bit of fact just seems to work. — Emma Donoghue

I think the trick with knowledge is to "acquire it, and forget all except the perfume" - because it is noisy and sometimes drowns out one's own "brain voices". The perfume part is important because it will help find the knowledge again to help get to the destinations the inner urges pick. — Alan Kay

The big corporations are suddenly taking notice of the web, and their reactions have been slow. Even the computer industry failed to see the importance of the Internet, but that's not saying much. Let's face it, the computer industry failed to see that the century would end. — Douglas Adams

I think there's just too much comedy. Sometimes I get requests from people: 'How do I get into comedy?' And I always say that what we need is more people in health care. And less people in comedy. — Marshall Brickman

If you cannot always elicit a straight answer from the unconscious brain, how can you access its knowledge? Sometimes the trick is merely to probe what your gut is telling you. So the next time a friend laments that she cannot decide between two options, tell her the easiest way to solve her problem: flip a coin. She should specify which option belongs to heads and which to tails, and then let the coin fly. The important part is to assess her gut feeling after the coin lands. If she feels a subtle sense of relief at being "told" what to do by the coin, that's the right choice for her. If, instead, she concludes that it's ludicrous for her to make a decision based on a coin toss, that will cue her to choose the other option. — David Eagleman

There is no connection between I myself yesterday and I myself in this moment — Shunryu Suzuki

Oh, never mind that, Emma," said Mrs. Wiggins. "Alice, what'll we do with this boy? You're the one that was hit. You're the one to decide on his punishment. — Walter R. Brooks

For a moment amongst the crowd, I saw you. I've since found out it's common for people separated from someone they love to keep seeing that loved one amongst strangers; something to do with recognition units in our brain being too heated and too easily triggered. This cruel trick of the mind lasted only a few moments, but was long enough to feel with physical force how much I needed you. — Rosamund Lupton

The voice came first, then the chill across her skin. A moment later, Noah Czerny joined her, dressed as always in his navy Aglionby sweater. Joined was perhaps the wrong verb. Manifested was better. The phrase trick of the light was even more superior. Trick of the mind was the best. Because it was rare that Blue noticed the moment Noah actually appeared. It wasn't that he gently resolved into being. It was that somehow her brain rewrote the minute before to pretend that Noah had been slouching beside her all along. — Maggie Stiefvater

It always strikes me, and it is very peculiar, that, whenever we see the image of indescribable and unutterable desolation - of loneliness, poverty, and misery, the end and extreme of things - the thought of God comes into one's mind. — Vincent Van Gogh

What is beauty? Beauty is no more than a trick; a delusion; the influence of excited particles and electrons colliding in your eyes, jostling in your brain like a bunch of overeager school children, about to be released on break. Will you let yourself be deluded? Will you let yourself be decieved?
-"On Beauty and Falsehood," The New Philosophy, by Ellen Dorpshire — Lauren Oliver

Now that our marriage is over, I know what love is. It's a trick on the brain, the adrenal glands releasing endorphins. It floods the cells that transmit worry and better sense, drowns them with biochemical bliss. You can know all these things about love, yet it remains irresistible, as beguiling as the floating arms of long sleep. — Amy Tan

They say the brain never ages it's a shame it can't teach the body that trick. — Stanley Victor Paskavich

Sid Hite makes the greatest books — Sid Hite

The hossanas of the multitude can never bring satisfaction to the discerning. Yet there exist those chamaleons of popularity who find their joy, not in the sweet breath of Apollo, but in the smell of the crowd. And not in mind: Do not be taken in by what are miracles to the populace, for the ignorant do not rise above marveling. Thus the stupidity of a crowd is lost in admiration, even as the brain of an individual uncovers the trick. — Baltasar Gracian

There probably is no more important quest in all science than the attempt to understand those very particular events in evolution by which brains worked out that special trick that has enabled them to add to the cosmic scheme of things: color, sound, pain, pleasure, and all the other facets of mental experience. — Roger Wolcott Sperry

You stop viewing yourself as being "pushed around" by the world when you realize that only you can "push" yourself. To quote Buddha: "Nothing is upsetting you. You get upset because you are upsettable." — Ken Keyes Jr.

( ... ) perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren't also dangerous, just because reading them didn't make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader's brain. — Terry Pratchett

Why do people want to drain your energy? So they can journey to other worlds after death, where pleasures are a thousandfold. It is a fast game. Human beings are powerful and skillful. — Frederick Lenz

One night, Ye was working the night shift. This was the loneliest time. In the deep silence of midnight, the universe revealed itself to its listeners as a vast desolation. What Ye disliked most was seeing the waves that slowly crawled across the display, a visual record of the meaningless noise Red Coast picked up from space. Ye felt this interminable wave was an abstract view of the universe: one end connected to the endless past, the other to the endless future, and in the middle only the ups and downs of random chance - without life, without pattern, the peaks and valleys at different heights like uneven grains of sand, the whole curve like a one-dimensional desert made of all the grains of sand lined up in a row, lonely, desolate, so long that it was intolerable. You could follow it and go forward or backward as long as you liked, but you'd never find the end. — Liu Cixin

Don't be fooled by clever hands, sir" the Sunlight Man said. He'd be lying with the back of his head on his hands, as he always lay. "Entertainment's all very well, but the world is serious. It's exceedingly amusing, when you think about it: nothing in life is as startling or shocking or mysterious as a good magician's trick. That's what makes stagecraft deadly. Listen closely, friend. You see great marvels performed on the stage - the lady sawed in half, the fat man supported by empty air, the Hindu vanishing with the folding of a cloth - and the subtlest of poisons drifts into your brain: you think the earth dead because the sky is full of spirits, you think the hall drab because the stage is adazzle with dimestore gilt. So King Lear rages, and the audience grows meek, and tomorrow, in the gray of old groceries, the housewife will weep for Cordelia and despair for herself. They weren't fools, those old sages who called all art the Devil's work. It eats the soul. — John Gardner

I hear the chipper voice of the Church magazines chirping in my brain: You're in a relationship with a boy who treats you as his emotional and spiritual equal. You feel a desire to express your affection through physical acts that will bring mutual pleasure. Do you (a) go for it! Sex is a natural gift from God, and a lot of fun so long as you do it safely!; (b) get him to propose! Sex is only fun if you do it in a Church of America-approved union! Plus, babies are so cute!; or (c) seek guidance from your local pastor for your sinful thoughts and ask for tips on expressing your love in a holy, nonphysical way? TRICK QUESTION! The answer is (d) the fact that you even momentarily considered having sex out of wedlock proves that you have no place in God's eternal kingdom, you reprehensible slut. — Katie Coyle

My favorite songwriting trick is writing something like 'XO.' In my brain, I thought, 'This is probably going to be a love song. How can I change that and find ways to twist that.' As a songwriter, it's your job for the song to take twists and turns that people don't expect. — Kelsea Ballerini

My favorite "trick" is to stop writing at a point where I know that I can pick up easily the next day. I'll stop in mid-paragraph, often in midsentence. It makes getting out of bed so much easier, because I know that all I'll have to do to be productive is complete the sentence. And by then I'll be seated at my desk, coffee and Oreo cookie at hand, the morning's inertia overcome. There's an added advantage: The human brain hates incomplete sentences. All night my mind will have secretly worked on the passage and likely mapped out the remainder of the page, even the chapter, while simultaneously sending me on a dinner date with Cate Blanchett. — Erik Larson

The phrase "going to sleep" has always given me great anxiety. I don't like doing things I'm bad at, and I have been told since I was very young that I am a bad sleeper. As soon as I become prone, my head will begin to unpack. My mind will turn on and start to hum, which is the opposite of what you need when you begin to switch off. It is as if I were waiting the whole day for this moment. Trying to go to sleep is often when I feel most engaged and alive. My brain starts to trick me into thinking this is the moment it should turn on and start working overtime. It is a problem. I need some rest. I have a lot to do. — Amy Poehler

Never let anyone out work you or out hustle you. Ever. — Rick Pitino

The two things you cannot do effectively on stage are pray and copulate. — Orson Welles

I'm pretty sure my parents are
pretending they are sick.
I know because I taught them both
to do that little trick.
You blow your nose and hold your head
and claim your brain is breaking.
And so, a pro like me would know
my folks are clearly faking.
A little thing I learned in school
convinced me I am right.
My parents are supposed to meet
my principal tonight. — Ted Scheu

I would not hesitate to say I was addicted to the Internet in the first two years. It can be addictive, and things not taken in moderation have negative effects. But the alarmism around 'Facebook is changing our brains' strikes me as a kind of historical trick. Because we now know from brain science that everything changes our brains. — Clay Shirky