Awareness of your surroundings occurs only when sensory inputs violate expectations. When the world is successfully predicted away, awareness is not needed because the brain is doing its job well.

What we find is that our brains have colossal things happening in them all the time.

Every atom in your body is the same quark in different places at the same moment in time.

Instead of reality being passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it.

As an undergraduate I majored in British and American literature at Rice University.

The first lesson about trusting your senses is: don't. Just because you believe something to be true, just because you know it's true, that doesn't mean it is true.

It turns out your conscious mind - the part you think of as you - is really the smallest part of what’s happening in your brain, and usually the last one in line to find out any information.

There is a looming chasm between what your brain knows and what your mind is capable of accessing.

You are more likely to believe that a statement is true if you have heard it before - whether or not it is actually true.

Love was not specified in the design of your brain; it is merely an endearing algorithm that freeloads on the leftover processing cycles.

We don't really understand most of what's happening in the cosmos. Is there any afterlife? Who knows.

...There is no greater dividing force in this world than self-interest....

I have an attitude now that is immovable. I shall remain outside of the world, beyond the temporal, beyond all the organizations of the world. I only believe in poetry.

I went camping for 33 days, and now everybody seems to care.

Many a woman would get a divorce if she could do it without making her husband happy.

The place that you gain the most power is within your own mind. Stopping thought generates power. That is why people meditate. The longer you can stop thought, the more power you gain.

Did you ever get the feeling that the story's too damn real?

I want to get my music out there. I enjoy playing shows; I just don't enjoy airports. I want to be more creative, but it's hard to get into that zone on tour.

Feel the rain on your skin, no one else can feel it for you.

Race is always tossed into the mix. The unspoken idea is always that white people have a right to carry guns and bear arms.

The causes of life's history [cannot] resolve the riddle of life's meaning.