How Pleasure Works (Book)

"...ways in which we reveal our fitness. . .displays of personal quality are only taken seriously if they involve some cost, some level of difficulty or sacrifice."
pg. 83

"...the mind is also an entertainment center, shaped by forces of sexual selection to give pleasure to others, to posses the capacity for storytelling, charm, and humor."
pg. 85

"Substances can be duplicated; history cannot."
pg. 110

"...when people listen to music while perfectly still, parts of the motor cortex and cerebellum -- the segments of the brain that have to do with moving around -- are active."
pg. 125

"If I dance with others, and they move with me, their bodies moving as I intend my own body to move, it confuses me into expanding the boundaries of myself to include them."
pg. 126

"A complex piece might take a long while to like and then a long time to get sick of..."
pg. 127

"William James, in Varieties of Religious Experience, writes that religion 'consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto."
pg. 213

"..Christopher Hitchens, author of God Is Not Great, has spoken about the importance of the 'numinous'--which usually refers to the experience of contact with the divine--and has argued that one can experience it without religious or supernatural belief. He suggests that humans rely on the numinous and the transcendent, and says that he personally wouldn't trust anone who lacks such feelings."
pg. 215

"Keltner suggests that at its core, awe is a social emotion; it corresponds to a 'sense of reverence for the collective.' Its primary trigger is powerful people who unite the community, and we diminish ourselves and are subservient to these awe-inspiring others."
pg.217

"Perhaps the feeling of awe is what we get when the system is overwhelmed; there is too much to process, too much physical vastness, or seemingly divine power, or human virtuosity."
pg. 218

"...imagination and transcendence are intimately related. Imagination serves as a tool through which to achieve certain forms of transcendent pleasure. We have the power not only to try to connect to a deeper reality, but to envision what this reality might be."
pg.221