he wanted to do, to be, to feel- and could not; he wanted sense, he wanted purpose- in Freud's words, 'Work and Love'.

Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears - it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear.

The power of music, narrative and drama is of the greatest practical and theoretical importance. ... We see how the retarded, unable to perform fairly simple tasks involving perhaps four or five movements or procedures in sequence, can do these perfectly if they work to music.

Nature gropes and blunders and performs the crudest acts. There is no steady advance upward. There is no design.

About 10 percent of the hearing impaired get musical hallucinations, and about 10 percent of the visually impaired get visual hallucinations.

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

Much more of the brain is devoted to movement than to language. Language is only a little thing sitting on top of this huge ocean of movement.