Brains are like representative democracies. They are built of multiple, overlapping experts who weigh in and compete over different choices.

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.

It's not like there's a law against flying.""Yes there is. The law of gravity.

Until I find a home in a human, art has my heart.

The child in you like all children loves to laugh to be around people who can laugh at themselves and life. Children instinctively know that the more laughter we have in our lives the better.

In Americana, the facts and the dreams seem to be all the same to me.

There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you

I am reminded every day of my life, if not by events, then by my wife, that I am not a perfect man.

Music has a way of filling in the missing places. It is a gift from God above, who didn't have to provide it, but He did anyway and I half think He decided life just wouldn't be as good without it.

The moment you get pregnant, you're tortured by the fear of not doing it well. But I feel at peace with that right now.

I can't say I have control over my emotions; I don't know my mind. I'm lost like everyone else. I'm certainly not a leader.

India is desperately romantic, utterly unashamed of its sentimentality, its generosity, its fierce pride and massive heart.