Music is part of being human.

We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.

My impression is that a sense of rhythm, which has no analog in language, is unique and that its correlation with movement is unique to human beings. Why else would children start to dance when they're two or three? Chimpanzees don't dance.

But the saddest difference between them was that Zazetsky, as Luria said, 'fought to regain his lost faculties with the indomitable tenacity of the damned,' whereas Dr P. was not fighting, did not know what was lost. But who was more tragic, or who was more damned -- the man who knew it, or the man who did not?

Fascinating, Doidge's book is a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain.

I often feel that life is about to begin, only to realize it is almost over.

At 11, I could say ‘I am sodium’ (Element 11), and now at 79, I am gold.