Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears - it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear.
Oliver SacksNature gropes and blunders and performs the crudest acts. There is no steady advance upward. There is no design.
Oliver SacksDarwin speculated that โmusic tones and rhythms were used by our half-human ancestors, during the season of courtship, when animals of all kinds are excited not only by love, but by strong passions of jealousy, rivalry, and triumphโ and that speech arose, secondarily, from this primal music.
Oliver SacksMusic can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does-humans are a musical species.
Oliver SacksI think the brain is a dynamic system in which some parts control or suppress other parts. And if perhaps one has damage in one of the controlling or suppressing areas, then you may have the emergence or eruption of something, whether it is a seizure, a criminal trait - - or even a sudden musical passion.
Oliver Sacks