Quotes About Emotion

No weakening of the spirit. No sense of the irony of human existence, that we are the highest form of life on earth and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die.

Once I almost asked her to put on legwarmers before we made love. But it seemed a request more deeply rooted in pathos than in aberrant sexuality and I thought it might make her suspect that something was wrong.

She cleaned it up now. She didn't wait for later. There was something in the moment that she needed to keep.

Où habitez vous ? - Dans le cÅ"ur des hommes, répondit Sullivan.

How can you explain that it's just that he was sad, that he'd been sad all his life, and he knew he'd always be sad?

A positive emotional state is ideal for creative thought, but it is not very well suited for getting things done.

Cognition attempts to make sense of the world: emotion assigns value. It is the emotional system that determines whether a situation is safe or threatening, whether something that is happening is good or bad, desirable or not. Cognition provides understanding: emotion provides value judgments. A human without a working emotional system has difficulty making choices. A human without a cognitive system is dysfunctional.

Science now knows that evolutionarily more advanced animals are more emotional than primitive ones, the human being the most emotional of all. Moreover, emotions play a critical role in daily lives, helping assess situations as good or bad, safe or dangerous.

Las personas no siempre se comportan como organismos razonadores plenos y lógicos, que empiezan por unos objetivos de alto nivel y trabajan para alcanzarlos

everything you do has both a cognitive and an affective component—cognitive to assign meaning, affective to assign value.

Cognition and emotion are tightly intertwined, which means that the designers must design with both in mind.

A brain in a negative emotional state provides focus: precisely what is needed to maintain attention on a task and finish it.

And Harold came into Perpetua's apartment. He said, 'I just want to know one thing. Are you happy?' 'Sure,' Perpetua said. (Donald Barthelme, Perpetua)

you get Kandinsky, a bad mother, all them pick-up-sticks pictures...

Queremos que el Padre Muerto esté muerto. Nos sentamos con los ojos llenos de lágrimas y deseamos que el Padre Muerto esté muerto… y entretanto hacemos cosas asombrosas con las manos.

A week later she is still with me. She is departing by degrees. If I tore her hair out, no one but me would love her. But she don't want me to tear her hair out. I wear different shirts for her: red, orange, silver. We hold hand through the night.

he is insane because when he loved you, you didn't notice.

I read poems for the pleasure of the mouth. My heart is in my mouth, and the sound of poetry is the way in. ~from an interview in Narrative magazine

The pleasure we feel, reading a poem, is our assurance of its integrity.

Beautiful writing may sparkle like a diamond necklace, but sparkling isn't a feeling.

Dive from a high platform, walk a country lane, watch your computer freeze, cross a finish line, hear your morning alarm, look for a parking space, toast on your anniversary, embrace a friend after a funeral. As you live your life, what do you feel? Terror, serenity, frustration, relief, groaning reluctance, patient endurance, pride, satisfaction, or a grief made bearable because somehow life will go on. We experience life as feelings.

Longing is different than need. Needing to solve plot problems can kick protagonists into action, but that's not the same thing as forging a human bond. What does that is inner yearning.

The most useful question is not how can I get across what characters are going through? The better question is how can I get readers to go on emotional journeys of their own?

Who your characters are, how they behave, what they believe, how they think, what they do, and the ways in which they feel are in your control. Why create characters who only raise shrugs? In