Casey Schwartz > Quotes

“Just under a thousand pages long (to say nothing of the endnotes, to say nothing of the footnotes that accompany many of the endnotes), it is a book written, in one sense, for a pre-iPhone brain, minutely detailed, endlessly populated, a novel that moves in millimeters. On the other hand, Infinite Jest is perfectly, almost uncannily suited for our digital age, its fragmented narrative jumping from one stream of ideas to the next. Wallace mirrors back to us exactly the kind of splintered thinking we’ve now grown used to through all the hours we spend online.”
― Casey Schwartz, Attention: A Love Story

“In the end, even in my own story, I don’t get to know everything.”
― Casey Schwartz, In the Mind Fields: Exploring the new science of neuropsychoanalysis

“Later I would learn that the shock of unfamiliarity I was feeling is actually a feature of the brain. The brain is inclined to make itself unknown, producing for each of us a version of reality that feels objective, but is in fact utterly subjective, varying among us for myriad reasons — mood, intelligence, experience, genetics. Because of the brain’s built-in tendency to remain behind the scenes, we’re not aware that so many elements of our daily lives — even, perhaps, every single one — are subject to interpretation.”
― Casey Schwartz, In the Mind Fields: Exploring the new science of neuropsychoanalysis

“Against the dulled or vulgar or simplified surface of things, [Freud] offered the tantalizing promise of subtext, a deeper truth, a further realm. He dared to challenge the constructions people offered up about themselves.”
― Casey Schwartz, In the Mind Fields: Exploring the new science of neuropsychoanalysis

“She radiates empathy, modesty, and insight.”
― Casey Schwartz, In the Mind Fields: Exploring the new science of neuropsychoanalysis

“Yet, for Maté, trauma isn’t limited to overt acts of violence, neglect, or abuse, though these horrors are, he argues, more widespread than most people would guess. Trauma is just as much what happens to a child when their parents are too stressed out or depressed or distracted to be able to attune themselves to that child’s emotional life, to be able to intuit what their child is feeling and respond to it. It is the good thing that didn’t happen to you, as much as the bad thing that did. This too is trauma, he says, and it is an ever more common picture of life in the West, as parents, families, and neighborhoods are all increasingly splintered, communities eroded, individuals isolated.”
― Casey Schwartz, Attention: A Love Story